Time Out.

“You love the Red Sox, but have they ever loved you back?”

The New York Yankees had a 10-game losing streak once. It was in 1913.

The Los Angeles Dodgers had a 10-game losing streak in 1992. That’s their only double-digit losing streak since they moved into Dodger Stadium – in 1962, 50 years ago.

The San Francisco Giants have had two 10-game losing streaks in the last 60 years – one in 1985, the other in 1996.

The Chicago White Sox – hardly a juggernaut franchise – have not lost 10 games in a row since 1976.

Hell, THE CHICAGO CUBS haven’t had a 10-game losing streak since they started the 1997 season 0-14.

The Kansas City Royals didn’t lose 10 games in a row in their first 17 years of existence. They didn’t lose even nine consecutive games until 1986, when they went on an 11-game losing streak. They started the 1992 season 0-9 after losing the last game of the 1991 season. They lost 11 in a row in 1997, a stretch during which Bob Boone got fired, ushering in the glorious Tony Muser Era in Kansas City.

That’s three double-digit losing streaks from 1969 through 2004, and one of them comes with an asterisk. Since 2005, the Royals have now lost 10 games in a row six times – six times in less than eight seasons.

The Royals lost 19 in a row in 2005, then endured 11 and 13 game losing streaks by the end of May 2006, which got Allard Baird axed in favor of Dayton Moore. Jon Lester’s no-hitter precipitated a 12-gamer in May of 2008, and a 10-game losing streak in July 2009 washed away whatever goodwill remained over the team’s 18-11 start.

Still, those were the expected growing pains that come with trying to rebuild a franchise from scratch. Even three years after Moore was hired, an extended losing streak was defensible.

This one isn’t.

Nearly six years after Dayton Moore was hired, in a year when the Royals were themselves so certain that they were going to take a step forward that they boldly unveiled the “OUR TIME” motto, the team has dumped a steaming pile of crap on the curb. Ten straight losses, and even worse, nine of them have come at home. The Royals have the worst record in baseball. Playoff dreams have been extinguished, and it’s still April.

And I’ll confess: I’m this close to losing it.

It’s one thing to play poorly. We’re used to that; you might say we’ve been inoculated against it. The losing streak shines a spotlight on the team’s incompetence, but the reality is that in 15 games, the Royals have been outscored by 21 runs. That’s not the worst run differential in baseball, and it’s not the run differential of a 3-12 team. The Royals should be 5-10 right now, which is to say they’ve played badly, but not so bad that you can’t chalk it up to a mediocre team being in a collective slump. I predicted the Royals to go .500, and .500 teams go 5-10 all the time. They even go 3-12 sometimes.

It’s not the losing streak that makes me want to snap. It’s that the Royals apparently have learned nothing from an entire generation of losing. For 25 years, the Royals have been the most anti-sabermetric team in all of baseball – while the Godfather of sabermetrics lived down the road in Lawrence – and over the last 25 years the Royals have the most losses in the major leagues.

And their current front office, like the front office before them and the front office before them, thinks that this is a coincidence. They keep arguing that the problem with the Royals is that they’re not doing the little things right. That may be true, but only because they’re not doing ANYTHING right. As Jazayerli’s Law of Fundamentals states:

A team’s ability to execute the “fundamentals” is inversely correlated to the time spent discussing the importance of executing them.

In the face of a losing streak that seems like it will never end, the Royals’ solution so far has been to double down on their kamikaze style of baserunning. Before yesterday’s game, the Royals already led the league in caught stealing. But none of those stolen base attempts were remotely as stupid as the one we witnessed yesterday.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Jason Bourgeois led off and reached base on an error by Brett Lawrie. This was a tremendous gift for the Royals, who were losing, 5-2, with six outs to go. Another baserunner would bring the tying run to the plate.

There were a lot of different ways the inning could have broken down from that point, but there was one thing that clearly wasn’t going to happen: the Royals were not going to attempt to steal. That would be ludicrous. Risk an out in order to get a runner in scoring position, when you’ve got the heart of your lineup coming up? When that runner doesn’t represent the tying run, or even the next-to-tying run? In the eighth inning? That would be madness. No one would be that stupid.

The Royals are that stupid.

Not only are the Royals that stupid, but the Blue Jays knew the Royals would be that stupid. Bourgeois wasn’t thrown out by the catcher – he was picked off by the pitcher, who threw to first base as Bourgeois lit out for second.

Not only did the Blue Jays know the Royals would be that stupid, they already told the Royals that we know you’re that stupid. With Alex Gordon at the plate and an 0-1 count, the Blue Jays pitched out. They pitched out with a three-run lead in the 8th inning, and the tying run on deck. They were so confident that the Royals would try an incomprehensively bad percentage move that they deliberately gave a ball to a patient hitter who, if he reached base, would bring the tying run to the plate, with Billy Butler and Eric Hosmer due next. After Gordon flied out, the Blue Jays were still so confident that Bourgeois would run that they threw to first – and nailed him trying to steal.

So this is what The Process has wrought, six years later. A 10-game losing streak. A team that’s so hell-bent on being “aggressive” on the basepaths and “making things happen” that even in a situation which every junior varsity player knows is a time to run conservatively, and EVEN AFTER THE OTHER TEAM SIGNALLED THAT WE KNOW YOU WANT TO RUN, they ran anyway. And got thrown out.

After the game, Ned Yost indicated that Bourgeois was not given the sign to steal, implicating Bourgeois for running on his own. That doesn’t make me feel much better. For one thing, in that situation it’s not enough to not order a stolen base attempt – you need to actively give the runner a red light. Secondly, THE BLUE JAYS HAD ALREADY PITCHED OUT – if that doesn’t remind you to make it clear to your runner to stay put, nothing will.

And finally, why was Bourgeois playing for the Royals? Because they had traded for him in spring training. They also traded for Humberto Quintero, who had his own brain lock in the top of the inning. With two outs and runners on first-and-third, J.P. Arencibia took off for second, trying to draw the throw to start the double steal – and Quintero threw to second base. Brett Lawrie then lit out from third base, and while Yuniesky Betancourt moved in front of the bag at second to cut off the throw, his throw was too late to get the runner at the plate, and the Blue Jays scored a cheap run.

I’ve seen the Royals try the double-steal dozens of times – when Bob Boone was the manager it seemed to happen every week – and I can probably count the number of times it worked on one hand. There’s a reason for that – most major league teams are skilled enough to defense the play. Usually they just hold the ball and concede second base, which is what Quintero should have done. The Blue Jays announcers were surprised that Quintero threw to second on the play. So there you go: the double steal can work. It just can’t work for the Royals, because in order for it to work, they’d have to be playing themselves.

Bourgeois and Quintero, by the way, cost the Royals a legitimate left-handed relief prospect in Kevin Chapman, and another prospect who has yet to be named, but is most likely either D’Andre Toney or Terrence Gore, both young outfielders with the tools to be interesting if they figure it all out someday.

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I’ve been writing this throughout the day, and I’m putting the finishing touches on this column tonight, after the Royals lost their 11th game in a row, their franchise-record 10th home loss in a row. And perhaps more than any other game in this streak, they lost tonight because their manager decided that the missing ingredient was a strategy that sabermetrics proved was a terrible idea 30 years ago.

It’s not simply that Ned Yost ordered the Royals to bunt. It’s not simply that he ordered them to bunt twice. It’s that HE ORDERED THEM TO BUNT THE RUNNER FROM SECOND TO THIRD. TWICE. In the third inning, Alcides Escobar led off with a double, and then Chris Getz – who was apparently tonight’s winner of “Leadoff Man Lotto” that they play in the clubhouse before every game – bunted Escobar to third base.

With the heart of the order coming up, Yost decided that it was worth giving up an out to move a runner 90 feet. You can’t even argue that he was trying to stay out of the double play. Yost had enough faith in Getz to put him in the leadoff spot – and then had so little faith in him that he ordered Getz to deliberately make an out just to move Escobar from one scoring position to another.

The Royals did not score.

In the fifth inning, Brayan Pena led off with a double, and this time Mitch Maier got the order. Perhaps Maier was being a conscientious objector, because the bunt didn’t work, as Pena was nailed at third base. Naturally, Escobar singled, moving Maier to third base with one out, which was the point of the bunt in the first place. And naturally, the Royals did not score again.

Both of these bunts came because the Royals were trying to score the go-ahead run in a tie game. In the top of the sixth, the Blue Jays showed them a more traditional method: Kelly Johnson walked, and Jose Bautista went boom-boom. And that was the ballgame.

You’d think the Royals might be aware of what power can do, given that their only run in the game came on an Eric Hosmer home run. Somehow, despite four doubles, four singles, and a walk in the game, the Royals did not score another run.

I don’t blame Ned Yost for the fact that the Royals were 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position. I absolutely blame Yost for once again thinking that the solution to an anemic offense is to order up the same tactic that has been hamstringing offenses for 100 years. There’s absolutely no way to justify bunting runners from second base to third, not that Lee Judge won’t try.

So now we’re at 11 losses and counting, the fifth 11-game losing streak in just over seven years. The other 29 teams in the majors have combined for 14 losing streaks of that length since 2005. The Cleveland Indians – THE CLEVELAND INDIANS, who were so bad for so long that they made the movie “Major League” about them – didn’t have an 11-game losing streak for over 70 years, from 1931 to 2009. The St. Louis Cardinals, our big brother down the street, lost 11 games in a row in 1978. That’s their only 11-game streak since at least World War I.

I can put up with the losing. I can put up with the delayed gratification, even if that delay now amounts to most of my lifetime. But I can’t put up with stupidity. I can’t put up with a team that has only one solution for every problem that develops: keep doing what we’re doing, only do it more. We keep getting thrown out on the bases? Just keep running, and eventually it will work. Making too many outs with runners in scoring position? Make them deliberately!

The other team walks more than our team does? Clearly the problem is with our pitchers, because whether a batter walks or not is completely up to the pitcher’s control, and never mind the fact that Bill James disproved that 35 years ago. God forbid we should encourage our hitters to be more patient at the plate. Yesterday Danny Duffy needed 113 pitches to face 24 batters; Ricky Romero needed only 104 to face 30. The Royals have drawn a below-average number of walks 22 years in a row, and not only is that unlikely to change in 2012, the Royals don’t even think that needs to change.

Anyway, I’m bitter and angry and probably incomprehensible at this point, so I’m going to take a time out. I’m tired of being a dupe. I’ve tried to blend realism and optimism since I started covering the Royals 16 years ago, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to argue that those two traits are reconcilable. Apparently, I was a sucker to suggest that the Royals might be a .500 team this year.

I’d like to think that when it comes to the other 29 teams in baseball, I know what the hell I’m talking about, even – or especially – when I take unpopular or unconventional positions. I’m proud of this column on the Phillies from last year. I’m proud of this column on the Nationals from last month. I’m wrong sometimes, but I’ll stack my track record up against almost anyone.

But when it comes to the Royals, I’ve been a raging buffoon for my entire career. A trained parrot – one that’s trained to squawk “ROYALS SUCK!” on command – would have done a far better job of predicting the team’s performance every season. (Except 2003. I’ll always have 2003. Even if that was one of the years I didn’t think they’d be any good.)

And now it’s 2012, one year after the Royals were acclaimed as having The Best Farm System Ever, the first year in ages that rational analysts (i.e. analysts other than myself) actually predicted the Royals to finish .500 or even above. And it’s clear now: no matter how far you think the Royals have come, no matter how fast you think they’re going, an 11-game losing streak is always trailing a step behind, ready to pounce like the demonic monkeys in Temple Run.

So I’m angry, but unlike back in 2009, I’m not really angry with the Royals. They are who they are. They’re trying to get better, even if they don’t really know how, and they might even figure it out one day. No, I’m angry with myself. I’ve spent literally thousands of hours writing about this team over the last four years, to say nothing about the time spent watching them, reading about them, thinking about them, perusing box scores of their complex league team…it’s not an exaggeration to say that the Royals have simply overwhelmed the free time in my life.

I’m not saying that there haven’t been benefits to this, if being arguably the world’s most famous Royals fan can be construed as a “benefit”. But the costs have been considerable. And with four children at home now, I’m thinking this would be a good time for me to take advantage of the Royals’ generous offer to take most of this summer off. Maybe read some good books. Maybe play Skyrim – or go back and play Oblivion, which I couldn’t find the time to play when it came out five years ago. Take my wife to the movies. Something.

I’m not dropping the mic; I’m just saying it will be healthier for me to be a little less hard-core about the Royals. I’ll still tweet about them and talk about them on the radio, and if they play respectable baseball for a few weeks I’m sure I’ll have something to blog about.

But if they continue to suck the life out of their fans, I’ll find something else to do with my time. Love is a two-way street, and when I’ve been reduced to starting a column by quoting Drew Barrymore in Fever Pitch, it’s time to take a breather.

This blog is something I’ve done purely out of my love for the team – I’ve deliberately kept this blog spartan and ad-free, because I never wanted this to feel like a job, like something I was obligated to do. But it has become one, in large part because I’ve been afraid to cut back on covering this team out of some misplaced fear that someone might question my credentials as a fan.

Well, screw that. I think I’ve earned lifetime credentials at this point, the same way the BBWAA lets guys vote for the Hall of Fame even after they’ve retired and haven’t watched a baseball game in 10 years. I don’t need to let the Royals consume my life in order to be a fan. So I’m going to dial it back a little.

I’m still rooting for them to win every night (at least until late September and draft position is on the line), and I hope they rip off a 20-10 stretch to get back to .500 and I go back to writing about them like nothing happened. I’m still optimistic that they will be contenders in 2013. Even in the wreckage of a 3-13 start, there are still things to be happy about:

- Mike Moustakas is hitting .286/.333/.518 and playing a genuinely above-average third base.

- Alcides Escobar is hitting .310 (!) and slugging .483 (!!)

- Danny Duffy really could be legit. His fastball has averaged 95.0 mph this season. The only starting pitcher in the majors who’s thrown harder? Stephen Strasburg. The radar gun at the K may be juiced, but that would affect his reading by no more than 1 mph. The only other starter who’s averaging more than 94.0 mph this year is Jeff Samardzija.

- Felipe Paulino can’t be blamed for this mess at all. A month ago the Royals looked ready to bury him in the bullpen; at this point, once he’s ready to go they’ll greet him in the rotation with open arms.

- The longer Bruce Chen continues to finesse his way past opposing batters, the more you have to consider the possibility that he’s the new Jamie Moyer. Not in the sense that he’ll still be pitching 15 years from now, but simply in the sense that he can make up for throwing 87 mph by being left-handed, changing speeds and arm angles on every pitch, etc. Chen is 34; when Moyer was 34 he came into his own as a starter for the Mariners, beginning a seven-year stretch when he averaged 209 innings with a 3.75 ERA in the heart of the Juiced Era. Chen won’t be that good, but he might just be good enough to justify his contract.

- Eric Hosmer’s numbers bear no resemblance whatsoever to the charge he’s putting into balls at the plate.

- Luis Mendoza can’t hurt us much longer.

Yes, even now, even after this, I still can find reason to be optimistic. I simply can no longer justify being obsessive. Not right now. I’ve got too much going right for me in life to let the Royals bring me down anymore. When they’re ready to lift me up, I’ll be here waiting for them.

The Score Board: 4/18/12.

In the past, when the Royals eliminated themselves from playoff contention with an early-season dive, I’d start a column with some variation of “Mayday!”

The problem is, it’s only April 18th.

That the Royals are in the midst of a long losing streak this early in the season is so unremarkable that it’s remarkable. For those of you who missed it on Twitter last night or the discussion on the radio today, here you go:

This is the ninth consecutive season in which the Royals have lost six games in a row by the 14th of May.

Nearly as remarkable is that this is the seventh time in those nine seasons – only 2009 and 2010 are exempt – in which the Royals lost six in a row by the end of April. Which means the losing streak had to begin no later than April 25th.

By comparison, the Royals once went over five years – from April 2003 to June 2008 – without a single six-game winning streak at any point in the season.

And now, they’ve lost seven in a row. Far be it from me to suggest that Dayton Moore and Ned Yost might not live up to the standards set by their mentors John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox, but the Atlanta Braves went nearly 16 years – from August 1990 to June 2006 – without a seven-game losing streak.

The Braves lost 10 in a row in 2006, and in 2009 they had a nine-game losing streak in April which dropped their record to 8-14. If you’re looking for a silver lining, the Braves recovered that year to finish 91-71 and make the playoffs.

If you’re looking for a silver lining, you’re best off not reading the remarks that Ned Yost made after tonight’s game. The Royals blew a 3-2 lead in the seventh inning, thanks to Jose Mijares allowing two-out singles to Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder sandwiched around a wild pitch, plating the tying and winning runs. After the game, Yost admitted that he made a mistake in the inning.

The mistake? After Mijares’ wild pitch tied the game and moved Cabrera to second base, he should have had Mijares intentionally walk Fielder.

Here’s what Yost said about giving up a hit to Fielder after giving up one to Cabrera: “The second time was pure stupidity on my part, plain and simple that’s what it was. After the wild pitch, we had a runner on second. I started to overthink the situation.”

This is where things start to go off the rails, my friends. Jose Mijares is on the roster for one reason: to retire left-handed batters. (Or at least, he should be.) I didn’t get around to commenting on his signing this winter, but I liked the acquisition. We saw a lot of Mijares the last four years when he pitched for the Twins, and he was generally effective as the quintessential left-handed specialist. Pitching from a near three-quarters delivery, his career line against left-handed batters was .212/.278/.331. For $925,000 guaranteed, he was a good gamble that he might bounce back from a disappointing 2011 season and fill that role, freeing Tim Collins up to pitch longer outings against hitters from both sides of the plate.

Coming into the game, Mijares had pitched well, allowing one run in five innings, walking two and striking out five. It’s his job to get left-handed hitters out. Prince Fielder bats left-handed. If you don’t trust Jose Mijares to get Prince Fielder out, why the hell is he on the roster?

What really bothers me about Yost’s comments is that THIS EXACT SAME SITUATION essentially sealed his fate as manager of the Milwaukee Brewers. Read this article. Please. On September 14th, 2008, with the Brewers in the thick of the wild-card hunt, with the game tied 3-3 in the bottom of the eighth, Yost brought Brian Shouse – like Mijares a card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Left-Handed Specialists – in the game to pitch to left-handers Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. After Utley bunted a runner over to second, Yost had Shouse intentionally walk Howard.

THAT Ryan Howard. The Ryan Howard who has maybe the biggest platoon split of any left-handed hitter in the game. When you have the chance to face Howard with a left-handed pitcher in a key situation late in a game, you’re supposed to get on your knees and kiss the ground.

Instead, Yost walked Howard, so that Shouse could face Pat Burrell, a right-handed hitter who crushes left-handers. Burrell singled in the go-ahead run. Shane Victorino, batting from the right side, then hit a three-run homer off Shouse.

On September 15th, 2008, Ned Yost was fired. The Milwaukee Brewers would rebound to win the wild card by a single game.

I wrote about this extensively when the Royals hired Yost, which you can read here. My conclusion then was that while Yost has never shown tactical decision-making to be a strength of his, that we shouldn’t let a single horrific decision overshadow the terrific work he had done in developing young talent.

I stand by that. I think Yost has generally done a good job of bringing the Royals’ young players along, and that Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas and Salvador Perez and Danny Duffy might benefit from his presence the way Fielder and Ryan Braun and Rickie Weeks and J.J. Hardy did.

But if he really thinks that the mistake he made tonight was not giving the Tigers a free baserunner, then he’s starting to panic. He’s letting the outcome dictate his decisions. Never mind that pitching to Fielder with Mijares was the best matchup the Royals had at that time – Fielder drove in the winning run, and that’s all that matters.

Which is ridiculous. Look at the real outcome of the at-bat – Fielder hit a hard groundball to the left of second base, about where the shortstop would normally set up. But because the Royals had the shift on against Fielder – which they should – Escobar was to the right of second base and the ball got through for a single.

In the bottom of the ninth, with two on and one out, Escobar hit a ball just inside the third-base line. But because the Tigers were playing their no-doubles defense – as they should – Miguel Cabrera was in position to snag the ball, step on third base, and throw to first to end the game.

As painful as it was, the game was essentially decided by defensive positioning and the vagaries of ground balls. One grounder had eyes, the other didn’t. Mijares was the right matchup against Fielder, and more than that, he did what he was supposed to do: he got a ground ball. No less an authority than Mariano Rivera once said after a blown save – I’m paraphrasing here – “I can only get ground balls – I can’t point them in the direction I want them to go.”

This isn’t quite as bad as what happened in Milwaukee, because Yost did indicate he would have then brought Louis Coleman in to pitch to Delmon Young. But if Yost really regrets letting Mijares pitch to Fielder, then he’s saying that he cares more about the results than he does about the process. And if Yost doesn’t trust the process, why should we trust The Process?

It’s unfortunate and upsetting that the Royals are 3-9. But it’s the job of the fans to overreact to the losing streak, to beat their fists against their chest and wail and gnash their teeth. It’s the job of the manager to stay the course, to trust the process more than the results, to have faith that the team he thought was good enough to compete two weeks ago is still good enough today.

It’s not his job to panic. If Ned Yost is starting to let the losing get to him, we’re going to be in for a long summer. And it’s still early spring.

The Score Board: 4/16/12.

Hey, no one said this would be easy.

The Royals were two outs away from starting the season with a 4-2 road trip. Then Jonathan Broxton couldn’t find the strike zone, Luke Hochevar gave up seven runs in the first inning of the home opener, and the Royals gave up 32 runs in a three-game series to the Indians.

Three days ago, the Royals had surrendered the second-fewest runs in the league. Now, they’ve given up the third-most.

The point here is that the standings can change wildly in the first few weeks of the season, and no matter how many times you tell yourself not to put too much meaning in such a small slice of the season, it’s human nature to ignore that advice. Just remember: the team that has given up the most runs in the AL right now is…Tampa Bay.

The Tigers started the year 4-0, and were leading game five 2-0 in the ninth with Justin Verlander on the mound, and I heard otherwise sensible people suggesting the Tigers could win 110 games this year. They lost that game and two of their next three; at 6-3 they still look like a good team, but not the unstoppable juggernaut that they resembled on Wednesday.

So let’s keep perspective here. If the Royals were 6-3, it wouldn’t mean that they were playoff-bound; we all remember just how meaningful an 18-11 start was. On the extremes, a team’s early-season record may portend something – the Royals’ 9-0 start in 2003 famously presaged a winning season a year after 100 losses. But 3-6 has no inherent meaning other than the fact that the Royals have lost a couple of games they could have won. It sucks that they’re 3-6, but it’s hardly time to jump ship on the youth movement because the pitching staff got its brains beat in for one weekend.

- Jarrod Dyson had an eventful weekend, and I say that as politely as possible. A terrible read on the flyball in the first inning on Friday set the tone, as he took the wrong route on another ball on Saturday, and then had the chance to throw Asdrubal Cabrera out at the plate in the fourth inning, but double-clutched the throw and then air-mailed the throw, allowing Cabrera to score easily. He then got thrown out trying to steal second in the ninth inning, killing what would have been the capper on a seven-run rally.

Dyson, unlike most low-power speedsters (think Juan Pierre), actually has an above-average arm. He also has well above-average range. He has elite speed. What we saw from him defensively for those two games was very much out of character for him. He’s played great defense in the past – remember, he already shares the Royals’ team record for most putouts (10) by an outfielder in one game. He was 20-for-22 in stolen base attempts in the majors - now 20-for-23 - and he had already stolen 6 bases in one week in Omaha this year. Frankly, if he was three inches taller, he might have erased all his bad mojo this weekend, because he would caught Shin-Soo Choo’s tenth-inning double, which would have been one of the most fantastic and clutch catches of the season – he got to the wall in plenty of time and timed his leap perfectly.

I point this out only because I’ve heard many fans ripping Dyson as a terrible fielder who has no business in the major leagues. I’m not defending his performance in those two games, but to judge him on those two games would be like judging a highly-touted hitter for going 0-for-8 with 6 Ks after getting called up. Ultimately, what will determine whether Dyson has a major-league career or not isn’t his defense or his speed; it’s whether he can sustain a .330 OBP or not. On that, the jury is still out.

- Through two starts, Luis Mendoza has thrown 9.2 innings, allowed 14 hits, walked 8 batters (one intentional), and struck out 3. The Royals wanted to believe his performance in Omaha last year was for real, but at some point the fairy tale has to end. His place in the rotation isn’t in imminent jeopardy, as it will be 2-3 weeks before Felipe Paulino is ready to return. But at some point the Royals need to confront reality.

- Then again, confronting reality has long been a weakness of the organization, e.g. Yuniesky Betancourt. I don’t want to waste precious minutes in every column ripping on Yuni, and he certainly had a good game on Saturday, including the game-tying homer in the eighth inning.

But I just want to point out that in the sixth inning, after he had reached base on an error with two outs, Betancourt failed to score on Mike Moustakas’ double that Choo had in his glove before he hit the wall and the ball popped out.

They barely mentioned it on the broadcast, and there was no replay that showed Betancourt running the bases at all, but I heard from a fan who was at the game that Betancourt stopped between first and second base when the ball was hit, because he forgot there were two outs. (The same fan claims that the fans were booing Betancourt after the play, but on the replay it’s impossible to tell whether they’re booing or yelling “Moooose”. Another reason why I’ve never been a fan of Moose calls – it’s impossible to separate approbation from reprobation.)

Given that the Royals lost in extra innings, you might argue that Betancourt’s failure to score on that play was important. You might even argue that it cost the Royals the game. Betancourt has his uses on the roster, and I even defended the notion of having him as a utility infielder when the Royals signed him. But this is just another example of how he just kills the Royals with things that don’t show up in the box score. The irony is that non-sabermetric types accuse people like me of overlooking the little things, while they praise Betancourt because he led the Royals in homers and RBIs in 2010.

The Score Board: 4/13/12.

(Thanks to reader “kctiger” for the title of this new column. “Score” as in 20, “Board” as in my analysis of where the Royals are at the moment.)

After the Cleveland Indians rendered this afternoon’s game the most anti-climactic home opener in Royals history, scoring seven runs before the Royals came to bat, the general consensus among fans was to blame Luke Hochevar for the full-on face plant.

That’s a reasonable first reaction. Hochevar did give up seven runs in the first inning, all of them earned. He allowed more runs in the first inning than the Royals had allowed in any of their six previous games. He allowed as many earned runs in the first inning as the Royals’ starters had allowed in the six previous games combined.

I’m not here to defend Hochevar. He was not sharp at all at the beginning of the game. He allowed eight hits in the inning. But let’s look at what happened in a little more detail:

Michael Brantley singled to center. This was a bloop single, a Texas Leaguer, not anything to get riled up about.

Asdrubal Cabrera doubled to deep right. This was a bad job by Hochevar – giving Cabrera a hittable pitch on a 1-2 count.

Shin-Soo Choo singled to right, Brantley and Cabrera scored. This is the turning point of the inning – Choo dribbled a ground ball to the right side, and Yuniesky Betancourt inexplicably was unable to move ten feet to his left to field the ball before it scooted past his outstretched glove.

You know how Alcides Escobar makes a fantastic play from deep in the hole and you have to rewind the play several times to figure out how he did it? This was the exact same thing, only the exact opposite – I had to watch the play over again just to figure how on God’s green earth Yuni didn’t get to this ground ball.

And on this one play, in the first inning of the first game at Kauffman Stadium this year, the concept that Betancourt might be a less atrocious defender at second base than he was at shortstop shattered. It was already fragile, mind you, but all spring long we heard the Royals make the claim that oh-my-God Betancourt is just such a good defender at second base, and we have to get him in the lineup, and you just wouldn’t believe the range he has at his new position.

And then he waves at a groundball that Frank White would have personally escorted to second base. I mean Frank White today. Rex Hudler could have come down from the announcer’s booth in his suit and tie and made that play.

Instead, it went for a two-run single, and the rest of the inning went downhill. If Yuni gets one out on that play, the inning ends with just two runs scoring. There’s no way to know what would have happened in subsequent innings; maybe Hochevar just keeps giving up line drives the next inning. But the arc of the game would have been completely different.

Carlos Santana struck out swinging. Shin-Soo Choo stole second base.

Travis Hafner grounded out to first. Choo advanced to third base.

Shelley Duncan singled to right. Choo scored.

This was one of the luckiest hits you’ll see all year. I’m serious. On an 0-1 count, Duncan was just trying to get out of the way of an up-and-in fastball, and somehow the ball hit the barrel of the bat – Duncan wasn’t even looking at the pitch as he tried to pirouette out of the way – at such an angle that it drifted over Eric Hosmer’s head and plopped down in no-man’s land down the right field line. It happens.

Casey Kotchman singled to right. Duncan advanced to second base.

Bad pitch. A hittable fastball on an 0-2 count.

Jason Kipnis tripled to deep center. Duncan and Kotchman scored.

The other brutally bad defensive play in the inning. Jarrod Dyson, who has played outstanding defense in his limited major-league playing time in the past, either completely misjudged the ball or completely misjudged the wind, allowing the ball to get over his head and land just out of his reach. This should have been the fourth out of the inning.

Jack Hannahan then singled, then Hochevar threw a wild pitch, then Brantley – who had one hit all season before the game – got his second hit of the inning, a double to cap the scoring. When Hochevar falls apart, he falls apart. That’s nothing new for him – his biggest weakness throughout his career has been his poor performance with runners on base compared to when the bases are empty.

But with a decent defense behind him, the Indians score two or three runs in that inning, and the Royals tie the game by the fourth inning. Dyson’s miscue was terrible, but it was also completely out of character for him. But while Dyson’s misplay was more obvious, it was Betancourt’s misplay that was inexcusable.

Not inexcusable for Betancourt himself – this is who he is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an infielder who has more difficulty going to his left. (Hard to blame him – he is a Cuban defector, after all.) When he played shortstop, it was the groundball up the middle that he couldn’t reach – now it’s the groundball in the 4-3 hole. But again, we knew that going in. The Royals, inexplicably, did not. The Royals sent down Johnny Giavotella because of his defense, but somehow are convinced that playing Betancourt over Chris Getz – against a right-handed pitcher, mind you – makes perfect sense.

It does not. It has not. It will not. Yuniesky Betancourt is a defensive liability, the one liability on the field this afternoon, and if the Royals want to give their pitching staff the best possible defense, they need to stop with this charade.

Maybe it’s a good thing that this happened in the home opener, because the Royals have the Field f/x equipment installed at Kauffman Stadium now. I can only hope that when Mike Groopman and John Williams get the data for that play, they’ll react with the sort of urgent panic you’d expect from the army translator who just picked up some chatter that the Soviets are about to launch.

If Getz is in tomorrow’s lineup, we can hope that Jin Wong burst into Dayton Moore’s office early this evening with a printout in his hand and a look on his face that said, “I have bad news.” The Royals’ mystifying commitment to Betancourt has cost them enough games.

Royals Today: 4/12/12.

So here’s the deal: if I’m going to keep this blog active and productive, I’m going to have to make some changes around here. Mainly, I’m not going to be able to write for long stretches at a time, so I’m going to have to make up for it by writing more often.

A few years ago, back when he was writing his blog, our dearly departed friend Chris Hayes used to have “One-Minute Mondays”, where he would blog as fast as he could for one minute and then post, usually in mid-sente

I can’t give you anything worth reading in one minute, but hopefully 20 minutes will suffice. The clock is ticking, down to 17:14 and counting. I’ll try to do this three of four times a week, sacrificing quality for quantity. We’ll try this out; let me know if this works for you in the comments. Oh, and if you have a catchy name for this column, let me know. “Plenty in Twenty”?

- The big news in the first week of the season is the rotation, which has been sensational – through six games, the starters have a 1.85 ERA, second in the major leagues behind only the Phillies.

There’s two ways of looking at this: you can argue that the rotation is going to be a lot better than we thought – or you can argue that the Royals just got one of the best weeks they’ll get from their starters all season, and they’re still just 3-3.

I argued before the season that the rotation isn’t quite as bad as everyone thinks, but I’m not about to claim victory based on one week. In 34 innings, the starters have combined for 15 walks and 25 strikeouts – hardly anything to boast about. Their success has come from allowing just 22 hits (meaning a .233 BABIP) and a single home run. The team as a whole has allowed just two homers in six games.

That’s not going to last. I think Luke Hochevar may have figured things out, and Danny Duffy’s first outing certainly was exciting. But I wouldn’t read anything into the first week’s performances.

- The bullpen, on the other hand, looks legit. They have a 3.38 combined ERA, and with just 5 walks and 25 strikeouts in 19 innings, they may be even better than that. (The bullpen’s BABIP is actually .400.) Tim Collins has thrown strikes so far, which potentially gives Ned Yost yet another late-inning power option he can trust.

He might need that new option if Jonathan Broxton doesn’t quickly bounce back and prove that his meltdown on Wednesday was a fluke. It was a save outing straight out of the Ricky Bottalico/Roberto Hernandez catalog, complete with an error, two walks, and two first-pitch hit batsman.

I don’t want to push the panic button just yet. In Broxton’s previous outing, he came in for the save, faced three batters, and struck out all three of them. That’s only the eighth time a reliever has done that in Royals history. In the first week, we’ve seen Broxton at his very worst, but also at his very best. We don’t know which is the anomaly yet.

I argued before that I’d rather have Broxton in the anointed closer role even though Holland’s the better pitcher, and you saw why on Wednesday – in a tie game, Holland came in to pitch the bottom of the eighth, and was allowed to get six outs. As a Capital-C Closer, he wouldn’t have done any of that – he wouldn’t have pitched the eighth, he wouldn’t have entered a tie game, and he wouldn’t have been allowed to pitch more than one inning.

The downside, though, is that when the Royals did have a one-run lead to protect, they brought in Broxton. The theory is sound; the problem is that the theory implies that while you use your best reliever in the most key situations, you use your second-best reliever in the closer’s role. It’s quite possible that Broxton is the fourth or fifth-best reliever in the pen.

For now, I’m fine with letting Broxton pitch the next time a save situation rolls around. But the second his control wavers, I’d have Aaron Crow or Holland or Collins getting loose as quickly as possible. Yost is a patient man, and his patience is a great asset when it comes to handling young players. It’s not an asset when it means sitting on your thumbs while your closer allows the tying and winning runs to score without the benefit of a base hit.

- This might – okay, this is – one of the dorkier things I’ve ever suggested, but for those of you attending the home opener tomorrow, may I make a suggestion?

Go ahead and cheer Eric Hosmer lustily when he’s introduced before the game. But save even louder cheers for Alcides Escobar. And when Alex Gordon’s name is announced, rustle up enough noise to make the stadium shake.

There is essentially nothing fans can do to influence the business decisions that teams and players make. If Eric Hosmer wants to sign a long-term deal with the Royals, it will get done, and if he doesn’t, then no amount of pleading on the part of the fanbase is going to change that.

But this is the “essentially” part. There’s a buzz about this team, and there’s a momentum that comes from having three players sign long-term contracts in the span of one spring training. That’s not enough to get Hosmer to sign, but it might be enough to get him to think about it. Tomorrow, send a clear signal to him, and to Moustakas, and to whoever else might be thinking about making a long-term commitment to the team: we take care of our own. We love all you guys, but the ones who love us back are getting the biggest cheers of all.

And if Salvador Perez – who is in town – gets introduced, bring the damn stadium down.

Royals Season Preview 2012.

It might seem a little ridiculous to publish a season preview after the opening series of the season, but then, my life has been a little ridiculous lately. Before Friday’s first pitch, I put out my prediction on Twitter for an 81-81 season. I’d like to explain that projection in a little detail.

As much as I would have loved to predict a postseason run for the Royals this season, I could not in good conscience do so. Maybe if they had signed Edwin Jackson, and maybe if Salvador Perez and Joakim Soria hadn’t been hurt, and maybe if the Tigers hadn’t signed Prince Fielder, I would have been tempted to. I certainly think the Royals could win the division – if we were setting odds on it, I’d put the Royals around 15% to win the AL Central, which is probably three times higher than those odds would have been in any of the last seven seasons. But I still think the Tigers have to be the favorite, and I felt that way even before they opened up an entire case of whoop-ass – and a couple of cans of last-at-bat magic – on the suddenly hapless Boston Red Sox this weekend.

But I think .500 is a very reasonable expectation for the Royals this season. Most objective projection systems out there don’t agree. Dan Szymborski, who does his ZIPS projections for ESPN these days, projects the Royals to finish 74-88 and in fourth place. Szymborski is an incurable optimist compared to Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections, which have the Royals tabbed for a 68-94 record.

No, seriously: 68-94. PECOTA thinks the Royals are the second-worst team in the major leagues, ahead of only the Astros.

It is perhaps for the best that you can’t actually wager on the lines that PECOTA sets, as that would sorely test my religious convictions against gambling. (I mean, that’s not gambling – that’s taking candy from a baby. Totally different.) The real Vegas lines, from what I understand, are somewhere in the 77-80 range for the Royals’ win total. That’s certainly more reasonable, but I expect the Royals to do better. Here, in a nutshell, is why.

1) They were a lot better last year than their record suggests.

The Royals were 71-91 last season. They were outscored by just 32 runs all season.

In 2003, the Royals were 83-79. That team was outscored by 31 runs all season.

We’ve known for over a quarter-century now that an estimation of a team’s win-loss record by looking at its runs scored and runs allowed, is a better predictor of the following year’s record than looking at its actual wins and losses. Bill James invented what he called the Pythagorean Theorem to express what a team’s record should have been based on how many runs they scored, and how many they allowed. By that formula, the Royals shouldn’t have finished 71-91; they should have gone 78-84.

That’s a pretty big difference. The Royals were ten games under .500 in the standings, but just three games under .500 on paper. I don’t think predicting the Royals to improve their underlying performance by three games is all that big a deal.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that the Tigers, who won 95 games last season, only outscored their opponents by 76 runs, and had a Pythagorean record of 89-73. The Tigers were nearly as lucky as the Royals were unlucky. The Tigers were 29-17 in one-run games, the Royals were 25-32. What looks like an insurmountable 24-game gap in the standings is cut by more than half simply by looking at the runs each team scored and allowed.

That doesn’t mean it’s likely the Royals will close the entire gap this season, but it’s certainly a lot more likely than you would think simply by looking at win-loss records.

That’s also why I think the Baseball Prospectus prediction is so…weird. Somehow, PECOTA thinks that the youngest team in the majors last season, a team with one of the game’s best farm systems, is going to decline by 10 wins in terms of actual team quality. I find this unlikely.

2) I believe in Kevin Seitzer.

I haven’t done my front office/coaching grades for 2011, but it won’t be a spoiler to tell you that Seitzer grades very highly. I loved his approach to hitting when he was a player, I loved his philosophy when the Royals hired him to be their hitting coach, and I loved the results last season.

One of the biggest reasons the projection systems are relatively down on the Royals is that they foresee regression – in some cases, massive regression – from many of the Royals’ best hitters last seasons. PECOTA’s weighted mean for Alex Gordon, for instance, is .262/.348/.432 – almost identical to his career numbers, which is to say that it doesn’t believe in last season’s breakout at all. Jeff Francoeur is projected to hit .270/.315/.411 – actually a touch worse than his career line of .270/.313/.433.

I don’t think that either Gordon or Francoeur will hit quite as well as they did last season. But I do think that the dramatic improvements in their performance were at least partly structural. I think that Seitzer altered their approach and their swing, and I think that was at least partly responsible for their improvement. And I think much of that improvement will hold this season.

PECOTA, by the way, projects the Royals to score 671 runs this season – fewer than every other AL team except the A’s and Mariners, both of whom play in pitchers’ parks. The Royals finished sixth in the AL in runs scored last year, with an offense that was nearly two years younger than every other team in the league. (Royals’ hitters averaged 25.8 years of age. The Minnesota Twins, at 27.6 years old, were the second-youngest offense in the AL.) Sorry to bite the hand that once fed me, but the idea that an offense that was both the youngest in the league and above-average in production should suddenly fall apart strikes me as unlikely. Very unlikely.

Speaking of youth and offense…

3) I think Eric Hosmer is about to go off.

He might have already gone off, actually, with two home runs in the season’s opening series. But even before that, all signs were there. The swing that lures scouts into thinking sinful thoughts. The statistical beauty of a .338/.406/.571 line in the minors at the age of 20. The .439 average in a month of Triple-A. The .293/.334/.465 line, with 19 homers, as a 21-year-old rookie.

I’ll say it again: rarely has any prospect compared to a former elite player as closely as Hosmer has compared to Will Clark. As a sophomore, Clark hit .308/.371/.580 with 35 homers. That slugging average may be a little optimistic for this season – particularly playing in Kauffman Stadium – but I don’t think Hosmer will be far off the pace.

4) I don’t think the starting pitching will be quite as bad as people think.

We’ve already seen a brilliant outing from Bruce Chen, which was gratifying to be sure, but shouldn’t change our perception of him too much – we know that he is capable of keeping a lineup off-balance for six innings. But I am optimistic – maybe hopeful is a more honest word – that we’re seeing a new Luke Hochevar. Or more precisely, we’re seeing the same Hochevar we saw in the second half of last season, which was a different guy than the pitcher we saw in the previous three-and-a-half seasons. He really does seem to have a different approach on the mound, working inside with much greater frequency to left-handed hitters, and his cutter - as Alberto Callaspo told Joel Goldberg yesterday - has become a real weapon.

A full-season of second-half Luke Hochevar, compared to what has passed for a full season of Hochevar in the past, would be worth something like 40 runs. That ain't beanbag.

I don’t know what to expect from Danny Duffy or Luis Mendoza, and I don’t think anyone knows what to expect from Jonathan Sanchez. I don’t know when or whether Felipe Paulino will return to form. But you throw those guys together, and I think that two of the four pitchers will emerge as reliable starting pitchers. The back-end of the rotation may be messy for the next month or two as the Royals sift through their options, but I’d rather have a bunch of high-variance pitchers then a bunch of safe Jeff Francis types. The Royals may take their lumps early, but by June they might have four starting pitchers who are average or close enough to average.

And regarding that fifth spot…

5) I think someone from the minor leagues will step up.

I don’t know who it will be. But the whole point of having depth in your farm system is so you don’t have to know who will step up. It might be Mike Montgomery, if he works out the kinks in his command. It could be Jake Odorizzi, who was brilliant in his season debut (5 innings, three hits, no walks, 8 Ks) and could be ready for the majors late in the season. It could be a complete wild card like Chris Dwyer. But I think that by August, the Royals will have a legitimate starting pitcher on the mound every night. They may not all be great; they may not even all be good. But they will be better than people think.

6) The defense will make the pitching staff look better.

Alcides Escobar. Lorenzo Cain. Salvador Perez by mid-season, and until then, probably a lot more Humberto Quintero than the FDA recommends. Even the Chrisiesky Getzancourt platoon at second base is there in part for (perceived) defensive skills. Gordon and Francoeur with cannons on the corners. Last year’s defensive numbers aside, Hosmer has the reputation of being a well-above-average first baseman. Even Moustakas, having lost a noticeable amount of weight this winter, has been a pleasant surprise so far at third base.

I wouldn’t say this is a great defensive team. But it’s a good one, maybe even a very good one. It’s probably the best defensive Royals squad since 1999, when Johnny Damon, Carlos Beltran, and Jermaine Dye patrolled the outfield, when Joe Randa and Rey Sanchez and Carlos Febles played the infield. It’s not a panacea for the rotation, but it will make a below-average rotation look slightly less below-average.

7) Bullpens keep taking on a more prominent role in run prevention, and this is a good bullpen.

It’s a universally agreed principle that bullpens have continuously become a more important part of the game pretty much since the NL was founded in 1876. Somehow, though, a lot of people seem to miss the corollary that goes with that: that as bullpens become more important, rotations by definition become less important. We saw it last year in the World Series, when the Cardinals won while getting more innings from their relievers than their starters, and yet people persist in dismissing the Royals in large part because their rotation is so weak.

It is weak, but it’s a weakness that is much easier to overcome when you have a bullpen that 1) should be well above-average, and 2) should throw an awful lot of innings. Last year, the Royals’ starters averaged 5.82 innings a start, and relievers tossed 35% of the team’s innings. There’s no reason to think that the relievers will contribute less this season; given the wealth of options in the pen, and the reinforcements (like Louis Coleman) biding their time in Omaha, they might contribute even more. I mean, it’s annoying that Jonathan Sanchez can’t get through five innings on Sunday without throwing 99 pitches, but on the other hand, if he can go five innings and allow two runs every time out, the Royals have the bullpen depth to take it from there.

They say you can’t win with a terrible rotation, and it’s true – you can’t win with a terrible anything. But even if the Royals’ rotation is as bad as people think, their offense should be average to above-average; their defense should be above-average; their bullpen should be above-average to well above-average. Pitching isn’t 90% of the game; it’s not even 50% of the game. (Run prevention is 50% of the game, but run prevention includes pitching and defense.) This runs counter to conventional wisdom, but starting pitching is probably about 30% of the game. So I refuse to believe that the 30% is going to take the other 70% down with it.

If you’re looking for goals to set for this season, the Royals’ incompetence over the last umpteen years facilitates this task for you. Here is a list of accomplishments the Royals can shoot for, in approximate order of difficulty:

1) Win 76 games, the most by any Royals team since 2003.

2) Win 78 games, the second-most by any Royals team since 1993.

3) Finish in third place, the highest rank by any Royals team since 2003.

4) Reach .500 for the first time since 2003 and the second time since 1994.

5) Outscore their opponents for the first time since 1994.

6) Finish in second place, the highest rank by any Royals team since 1995.

7) Win 84 games, the most by any Royals team since 1993.

8) Win 85 games, the most by any Royals team since 1989.

9) Win the division or qualify for the playoffs, for the first time since 1985.

10) Win 93 games, the most by any Royals team since 1980.

Just shoot me now, by the way.

Royals fans grade on a curve; we evaluate our teams on a different scale than most. Knocking off even just the first item on this list would qualify the season as a modest success, albeit a modest disappointment as well. We’ll see how things go, but I’m confident that by year’s end, you can cross the first four items off. Items #5 and #6 are definitely in play; with a little luck we could get down all the way to #8.

All that really matters, of course, is #9. I don’t think they’ll get there this year. But I think we’ll have a lot of fun watching them try.

Royals Report Card 2011: Part Eight.

Alright, we’re into the lightning round. Let’s do this fast.

Louis Coleman: B+

The Royals drafted Coleman in the fifth round of the 2009 draft, and he was seen as a signability pick – he was a college senior, so he had less leverage to sign. But he was an excellent college pitcher, the ace of the LSU staff and the guy who recorded the final out of the College World Series that year.

Because he didn’t throw that hard and threw from a three-quarters delivery, teams didn’t see him ever succeeding as a starting pitcher in the pros. But the Royals quite sensibly thought that he had the ability to be a situational right-handed reliever at the very least, and when it’s the fifth round, it makes perfect sense to draft a guy who may have a limited ceiling but also is a safe bet to have a major-league role in some capacity.

And that’s exactly what the Royals got. He made it to the majors in less than two seasons, after a minor league career that included a 2.16 ERA in 121 innings, just 76 hits and 31 walks*, and 141 strikeouts.

*: From now on, just assume that “walks” means “unintentional walks” in my writing. I’m tired of writing out the qualifier, but I think it’s silly to lump the two together.

Coleman was the first callup of last season, after he had whiffed 16 of the 30 batters he faced in Triple-A, and had a very good year: 2.87 ERA in 60 innings, 44 hits, 20 walks, 64 Ks. His fastball is a little straight, leading to nine home runs, and he not surprisingly had a big platoon split: right-handed hitters hit .180/.260/.360, while LHB hit .257/.371/.432. (Although that OBP against LHP is larded with six intentional walks in just 74 at-bats.) But let’s be honest: he would have been the best pitcher in the Royals bullpen in most years between 1996 and 2006.

And now, he’s back in Omaha, because the Royals felt he wasn’t one of their four best right-handed relievers. You could quibble with the decision to keep Everett Teaford ahead of him, but the Royals do need at least one reliever who can go 2 or 3 innings at a time, and Coleman isn’t that guy. This is a deep bullpen.

The gambit to take Coleman in the middle rounds of the draft worked so well that the following year, the Royals did the same thing, using their fourth round pick on a senior college left-hander out of Florida. Kevin Chapman may well turn out to be an even more useful bullpen piece than Coleman, but he’ll be doing so in Houston.

Tim Collins: C

The biggest compliment I can give Collins is that while he started last season as a bit of a freak show – hey, everyone, come see the “5-foot-7” pitcher! He looks like the batboy! – by the end of the year, what I was hearing about Collins were complaints from fans that he walked too many guys, and even some doubts about whether he was all that he was hyped to be. In other words, he was being treated like every other pitcher, height be damned. That’s a victory in itself.

No question, Collins’ control needs refinement. He walked 46 batters in 67 innings, or 6.2 per 9 innings. The only pitcher in the majors last year (min: 50 IP) with a higher walk rate was Aroldis Chapman.

But when I watched Collins pitch last year, I didn’t get the vibe that he couldn’t throw strikes, the way Mitch Williams, to name another 21-year-old left-handed rookie who walked a ton of batters, did. I got the vibe that Collins simply chose to work the edges of the strike zone, and was willing to walk a batter rather than give him something good to hit. It seemed to me like he wasn’t walking a lot of guys on four or five pitches, but that he was getting to 3-and-2 on everyone, and then daring them to take a pitch.

Of course, perception doesn’t always fit reality. But the data is suggestive.

While Collins had the second-highest rate of walks per nine innings, he had the tenth-lowest percentage of pitches that were strikes, at 59%. Kyle Drabek, at 55%, was the wildest pitcher in the majors by this metric, but other guys who threw fewer strikes than Collins included Francisco Liriano and Trevor Cahill.

Of the 295 batters Collins faced, 60 of them – over 20% - reached a full count. Of those 60 batters, nine struck out – but 26 walked, more than half the walks Collins surrendered.

I don’t have the data mining skills to know how those numbers compared to a typical pitcher. But I can compare him to Chapman, who faced 207 batters, and only 33 reached a full count. (17 walked, 8 struck out.) I looked at two other wild hurlers, Henry Rodriguez and Carlos Marmol. Rodriguez reached a full count on 60 of 295 batters; Marmol did so on 58 of 327 batters.

Not counting intentional walks, Chapman walked a batter on four pitches 9 times. Marmol did as well. Rodriguez did so 12 times. Collins only did so 7 times.

The sample size is small, and the differences may well be meaningless. But I’m glad to see that the data is at least suggestive that my theory makes sense. If Collins’ high walk rate was partly a matter of choice, it would seem to be an easier problem to fix than if it was a matter of him simply not being able to find the plate.

Mind you, there are other, more fundamental reasons to think his walk rate will improve this year. He was just 21 last year, and a rookie, and young pitchers tend to improve their command more than any other skill as they reach their mid-20s. While he was wild in the minors, it wasn’t nearly to this degree – he walked 94 batters in 223 innings, or 3.79 per nine.

It’s possible Collins takes the Mitch Williams path and never learns to harness his command. But I’m optimistic he goes more the Scott Radinsky route. Radinsky was a 22-year-old left-handed fireballer who walked 35 batters in 52 innings as a rookie. The following year he walked just 21 batters in 71 innings, and was one of the best left-handed relievers in the majors. Despite a shoulder injury that cost him the 1994 season, Radinsky still had an ERA under 3 five times in an eight-year span before his career petered out.

Aaron Crow: B+

I mean, sure, Crow was coming off a season in which he managed a 5.73 ERA in 163 innings split between A-ball and Double-A, so yeah, I’d have to say he exceeded expectations. He made the All-Star Team as a rookie; when he was selected he had a 1.36 ERA in 40 innings, having allowed just 26 hits and 15 walks with 39 strikeouts.

In his very next outing, he allowed 3 runs in 1.2 innings and blew a 4-2 lead in the eighth inning on July 4th. From that point until the end of the season, Crow threw just 22 innings, allowed 29 hits and 14 walks, with a 5.24 ERA. He missed several weeks with a sore shoulder.

Still, it was a successful year overall, and if the goal was to give Crow a year to acclimate himself to the majors by pitching in the bullpen, allowing him to gain confidence in getting hitters out by airing out his fastball and concentrating solely on his fastball and slider, with the intention to then move him to the rotation – you know, the way teams used to break in promising young arms – it would have been a great stepping-stone year.

But that’s not how it works anymore, unfortunately. Teams have placed such an emphasis on their bullpen – even as we know that it’s much easier to find quality relievers than quality starters – that they’re afraid to mess with success. They can’t risk losing 70 good innings, even if it might one day lead to getting 200 good innings. The Royals officially moved Crow back into the pen after Joakim Soria’s injury, but the odds were always slim that he was going to be in the rotation this year. And the Royals have already made noises about how Crow, having thrown only 62 innings last year, would have to be gently moved back to a starting role by stretching out his arm.

I’ve tried to be polite about this in the past, but it hasn’t worked, so pardon me for being more explicit: THE VERDUCCI EFFECT IS BULLSHIT. There is NO NO NO evidence that a pitcher who exceeds his previous year’s innings total by 30, or 40, or even 200, is more likely to get hurt than a pitcher who doesn’t. Yes, if you take a list of young pitchers who exceeded their innings total, some of them will get hurt the following year, and some will see their performance erode. But young pitchers get hurt. And young pitchers who exceeded their innings total probably did so because they were pitching better than they have before. When those pitchers decline the following year, that’s not the Verducci Effect: that’s regression to the mean. Every serious statistical study that has looked at this concept has come to the same conclusion: there is no magic threshold of innings increase that a young pitcher should not cross.

Aaron Crow threw 163 innings in 2010. That’s actually an incredibly high total for a minor-league pitcher in today’s era. I don’t have the time to check, but I’d wager that’s the most innings thrown by a Royals’ farmhand in the last five years. But you’re trying to tell me that because he threw only 62 innings last year, now Crow is suddenly incapable of throwing more than 100 or 130 innings this year? Please.

The injury concern I have with young pitchers is more general: they shouldn’t throw too many pitches in any given start. Thankfully, the baseball industry has completely overhauled their approach to pitch counts in the last 20 years, to the point where that hardly is a concern at all.

The evidence that we do have, dating back to Craig Wright’s book The Diamond Appraised, is that the concern with pitchers is primarily before the age of 25. You can’t find a 20-year-old pitcher who threw 250 innings in the live-ball era that didn’t live to regret it. You’ll only find a few 22-year-old pitchers who did the same. But once a pitcher turns 25, you can ramp up the pitches and the innings a little.

Aaron Crow turned 25 this winter. I think he can handle the workload. When Nolan Ryan turned 25 years old, he threw 284 innings, and he did just fine, in large part because he threw relatively few innings before he turned 25. The year before, he threw just 152 innings. That’s a 132-inning bump in one year. Verducci Effect, my ass.

Sorry, Tom. You’re a great writer. But you’re not an analyst, and you really need to stop promoting this debunked concept.

Anyway, the sad thing about the Royals and Crow is that they’re hardly out of step with the industry on this one. Look at how the Yankees screwed up Joba Chamberlain, or how the Reds are doing their best to screw up Aroldis Chapman. Or look at the Astros, who have taken Brett Myers – who has averaged 220 innings with an above-average ERA the last two years! – and made him their closer. That’s right, because there’s nothing the worst team in baseball needs more than a closer.

At least the Rangers, after using Neftali Feliz as their closer for the past two years, are finally willing to gamble that he can render more value throwing 180-200 innings than throwing 60-70. The Rangers, of course, take their cues from Nolan Ryan.

I have no idea if Crow can succeed as a starter; some scouts whose opinions I respect very much don’t think he can. But don’t you have to find out? Especially when you already have a phenomenally deep bullpen, and a rotation that most consider among the worst in baseball? Maybe the Royals are taking the Feliz route with Crow, and have every intention of moving him back to the rotation soon. But if the Royals aren’t willing to do so now, you have to wonder if they ever will.

Kelvin Herrera: A

A year ago, Herrera was full of promise, and completely devoid of health. He was talented enough that he reached a full-season minor league at the age of 18, making three appearances for the Burlington Bees in 2008 (and pitching well.) He then pitched in a total of nine games in 2009 and 2010 combined. He slipped onto the back end of Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook, ranking 30th in the Royals’ system this time last year.

An oft-injured starting pitcher can make for an often-healthy reliever, and that’s what we saw from Herrera last year. He jumped three levels in one season, from high-A to Double-A to Triple-A to the majors. In 68 minor league innings, he allowed 42 hits, walked 13, and struck out 70. Those of you who saw him pitch on TV a couple of days ago saw why – in addition to throwing a high-90s fastball, Herrera throws a changeup that’s almost unfair.

A lot of prospect experts – I’m thinking of Kevin Goldstein here, although it holds true for almost all of them – hate using comps for prospects. Every player is unique, and comparing a prospect to a major-leaguer is inaccurate and usually overly optimistic. I get their concerns, but personally, I love comps, because it makes my life easier. It’s hard to keep track of literally thousands of different ballplayers from the majors down to rookie ball. Maybe it’s not entirely accurate to say that Eric Hosmer resembles Will Clark – but it’s accurate enough, and it conveys a skill set much more succinctly than to say “Hosmer is a left-handed hitting, slick-fielding first baseman with the ability to challenge for a batting title, hit 30+ home runs, and even steal a few bases.”

Anyway, for the past six months or so I’ve been using one particular comp for Herrera: Rafael (not Yuniesky) Betancourt.

They’re obviously not identical – Betancourt actually started his career as a middle infielder, didn’t convert to pitching until he was 22, blew out his arm and missed most of three seasons, and didn’t reach the majors until he was 28. But the similarities are real:

- Both throw upper-90s heat

- Both throw excellent changeups

- Both have outstanding control

- Neither throws a good breaking ball

Betancourt’s control is beyond outstanding, actually. In 560 career innings, he has 99 walks (unintentional, again). When Herrera hit the very first batter he faced in the major leagues, he equaled Betancourt’s career total – Betancourt has hit one batter in his nine-year career. From 2005 to 2009, he threw two wild pitches – total.

Betancourt has never been entrusted to be a closer – at least until this year, when the Rockies finally acknowledged the fine work he’s done over the last decade. (He throws so many strikes that he’s susceptible to the homer, having allowed 59 in 560 innings, which might have held him back.) But he has a 3.18 career ERA, including a 3.00 ERA since joining the Rockies in 2009. With the exception of one awful season (2008), he’s alternated between being good and being very good from year to year. I argued at the time that his 2007 season was the best season by a middle reliever ever.

The arc of Betancourt’s career, as a pitcher who hasn’t quite been good enough to be an elite closer, but certainly good enough to be an elite set-up man, seems like a reasonable expectation for Herrera. That will play.

Greg Holland: A+

The best grade for 2011 goes to the guy who didn’t even make the Royals’ Top 30 Prospects list, a guy I ranked behind Blake Wood before the season began, a guy who started the year in Triple-A, then came up in mid-May and had, inning for inning, one of the most dominant relief seasons in the franchise’s history. His 11.10 Ks per 9 innings ranked second in team history (min: 50 IP), behind Soria’s 2009. His 5.55 hits per 9 innings ranked third, behind Soria’s 2008 and Robinson Tejeda’s 2009. (I love how two different Soria seasons rank ahead of him.) Holland’s WHIP of 0.933 ranks fourth, behind Soria’s 2008, Roger Nelson’s 1972, and Dan Quisenberry’s 1983.

Not only did Holland have a 1.80 ERA, he allowed only 2 of 33 inherited baserunners to score, which lowered his teammates’ ERA by a considerable amount. While acknowledging that relievers are fickle and he could turn into a pumpkin as quickly as he busted out of one, he’s pretty clearly the best reliever on the roster at this moment.

Which is why I’m pleased that Ned Yost just announced Jonathan Broxton will be the closer.

While the closer is an important role, so is the role of the guy who comes in with the game tied, or who comes in with men on base and the game on the line. If Holland had been named the closer, he wouldn’t have seen 33 inherited runners – he might not have seen five all year. Let Broxton take the glory role, particularly since he’ll be a free agent at year’s end. If Holland were named the closer, all those saves would just increase his salary come arbitration time in two years. Furthermore, if Soria does come back, it will make for a lot less drama if the guy who kept his closer’s spot warm was on his way out the door anyway.

Jeremy Jeffress: D

The stuff is still there. Jeffress still throws 100, and his curveball still buckles hitters’ knees and flutters scouts’ hearts. Pitching in the Arizona Fall League All-Star Game, Jeffress came in and struck out the side – including two players named Bryce Harper and Derek Norris.

He was only pitching in the AFL because he couldn’t throw enough strikes to stay in the majors after breaking with the team on Opening Day. After walking 11 in 15 innings, he went to the minors and walked 40 more in 56 innings, with just 44 strikeouts – necessitating a demotion all the way to Double-A. (He also got arrested – though the charges were later dropped – on a domestic assault charge this winter. Idiot.)

The stuff is still there, and I certainly wouldn’t dismiss the chance that the light bulb goes on at some point and he becomes an elite reliever overnight. But for now, I’d treat Jeffress as a lottery ticket. Maybe you cash in at some point, but for now you just stuff him in your wallet and check back later.

Joakim Soria: D+

I’ve already said everything I need to say about Soria. If he never throws another pitch for the Royals, I’d still put him in the team’s Hall of Fame whenever he becomes eligible. By bWAR, Soria’s first four seasons were all better than Holland’s 2011, and all rank among the 15 best relief seasons in team history.

Robinson Tejeda: F

Listed more as a cautionary tale than anything else. Tejeda was claimed off of waivers from the Rangers in 2008, and for the next two-and-a-half seasons was a very valuable reliever – valuable enough to start seven times, and do well in that role. In 174 innings, he allowed just 120 hits. He walked 92, but struck out 184, and allowed only 12 home runs and a 3.47 ERA. He was great.

In 2011, he started the season with no velocity on his fastball, was disabled after 7.1 ineffective innings, and when his velocity didn’t come all the way back, he was placed on waivers. No team was willing to pick up his modest $1.55 million salary, so he toiled the rest of the year in Omaha, finished with a 3.80 ERA and decent peripherals there, and signed a minor-league deal with the Indians this winter.

With relievers, it’s easy come, easy go. The Royals may have a great bullpen today, but it could fall apart in a hurry. And with as many arms as they have, they’d be fools not to trade one or more of them while their stock is still high.

Blake Wood: B

He wasn’t exactly good last season, but Wood was certainly adequate, and that was more than I expected from him. He was drafted as a starter in the third round in 2006, the transitional draft when Dayton Moore had been hired when no one was in control, the draft that gave us Luke Hochevar as a #1 pick and the execrable Jason Taylor in the second round. Wood looked like a blown pick himself, as a starter who simply didn’t have the command to get guys out. But he started 2010 in the bullpen, his velocity ticked up, and he showed at least a glimmer of hope.

Then last season, in 70 innings, he allowed 66 hits, walked 25, and struck out 62, with a 3.75 ERA. If that’s your eighth-inning guy, you have problems. But at this point, even if he were healthy he would be the last guy in the Royals’ bullpen at best. I don’t think he’s got more upside than what he showed last year – his fastball is too straight to fool batters more often than he did. And I don’t see where he fits on this team even after his elbow heals up.

But he’s 26 years old, he’s not arbitration-eligible until next year, and he’s five years from free agency. There are probably a few teams out there that would be happy to have a guy like Wood on their roster. Holding on to him is kind of pointless, and I’d be happy to see him traded away for some magic beans that may or may not sprout in a few years. If not Wood, then someone.

The Royals have a wealth of relief talent, but it’s not going to do you any good in Triple-A, and it’s likely to evaporate soon enough, so best to extract as much value out of it now as possible. Moore has shown an admirable ability to build bullpens on the cheap in Kansas City – his one big failure was the year he actually decided to throw money at the problem. If you’ve got that ability, you ought to be aggressive in cashing those guys in at their peak, knowing you have the resources to replace them soon enough.