For Want Of A Pitcher: Here We Go Again.

(While I plan to discuss Kevin Seitzer in greater detail later, I want to focus on the rotation right now. So my reaction in brief: am I sad that Seitzer was fired? Yes. Do I think he was scapegoated? Of course. Do I think firing him was a mistake? …that, I’m not so sure about.)

I’m sitting down on a Saturday afternoon, trying to take advantage of some rare free time to begin my analysis of the Royals’ rotation options for next year…and Bob Dutton drops a column on us that contains much food for thought. I’ll get to Dutton’s column later, I promise, but let me first share my thoughts with you as they were on the day the season ended.

Before the Royals figure out who they should bring into the rotation mix from outside the organization, they first need to get a firm handle on what options from within the organization should be part of the rotation for 2013.

The Royals only have one starting pitcher under a guaranteed contract for next season. That’s Bruce Chen, who is guaranteed $4.5 million. Chen had a disappointing season and that contract looks like a mistake at this point, but he wasn’t the complete disaster that, say, Luke Hochevar was. Chen finished with a 5.07 ERA, but that understates his performance nearly as much as his 3.96 ERA between 2010 and 2011 overstated his performance. Chen had a strikeout-to-walk ratio of better than 3 to 1 (140 to 44, ignoring intentional walks). He was done in by the 33 homers he allowed in 192 innings. He’s an extreme flyball pitcher, but in 2010 and 2011, he allowed 35 homers in 295 innings. Amazingly, his xFIP – my favorite “ERA estimator” – was better in 2012 (4.62) than it was in 2011 (4.68) and 2010 (4.79).

The consistency of his xFIP is telling – Chen has basically been the same pitcher three years running, only his ERA has jumped all over the map based on how far the fly balls were carrying. That’s basically who he is – a starter with an ERA in the mid-4s. He fits into the #5 slot in a rotation fine.

Luis Mendoza was probably the most pleasant surprise on the entire roster this season – particularly after he learned to throw the cutter around the end of June. He finished with a 4.23 ERA despite an unimpressive strikeout-to-walk ratio of 1.86. However, after implementing the cutter beginning with his start on June 29th, Mendoza had a 3.82 ERA, averaged over six innings a start, and had a K/BB ratio of 2.64. His sinker makes him a strong groundball pitcher as well. I’m perfectly happy slotting him in as the #4 starter.

Jake Odorizzi is the Royals’ most major-league-ready pitching prospect, and there’s a case to be made that he should be in the rotation to start the season. But I would be perfectly happy if he went back to Omaha to open 2013. While he had a fine 2.93 for the Storm Chasers this season, in 107 innings he struck out 88 and walked 40, a borderline ratio even at the Triple-A level, and a sign that he still has some things to work on.

Remember, last year in his first crack at Double-A, his strikeout rate dropped significantly – he K’d 11.8 batters per 9 innings in Wilmington before his promotion, but just 7.1 per 9 at Northwest Arkansas. So the Royals started him in Double-A again this year, and he dominated in seven starts (11.1 Ks per 9) before his promotion to Omaha, where his K rate dropped to 7.4 per 9. If history is any guide, Odorizzi could use a second audition in Triple-A to prove that he can miss bats there, and be ready for a permanent place in the Royals’ rotation by June or July. At the very least, he makes for a great #6 starter, the first understudy in the event that anyone in the projected rotation gets hurt during spring training. But the Royals should plan to break camp in 2013 with five starters better than Odorizzi.

Will Smith is a left-handed finesse pitcher who won’t kill you if you need him to fill in for two or three starts, but at least at this point in his development, he’s not a major-league starter. As a #7 starter, you could do a lot worse; as a #5 starter, you could do a lot better.

So right now, this is how the Royals’ rotation sets up:

#4: Luis Mendoza

#5: Bruce Chen

#6: Jake Odorizzi

#7: Will Smith

You may have noticed that there’s something missing at the top.

I have already analyzed Jeremy Guthrie’s performance extensively, so I’ll sum up here by saying that he projects as a very solid #3 starter, maybe with #2 upside. He certainly pitched like a #2 starter for the Royals this year, but you can’t completely ignore his performance with Colorado, he turns 34 in April…let’s just call him a #3 starter for simplicity’s sake.

I’ve been on the record as saying the Royals should offer him 2 years, $15 million; Sam Mellinger has suggested 2 and 18. Whatever. Somewhere in that range seems like something both sides can agree on; Dutton strongly suggests that the Royals will try to get something done with Guthrie in that range. If Guthrie gets a 3/30 offer elsewhere, he’s probably gone, but the odds of that seem low.

I do agree that the Royals should be aggressive in resolving Guthrie’s status sooner rather than later – but by “resolving” I mean “make him a quality offer, and if he says no, move on”, not “give him whatever he wants”. The Royals can negotiate with him now, whereas it will be a month before they can talk to other free agents. By the time free agent season opens, the Royals should already know whether Guthrie is in the fold or not.

But for now, let’s add him to the pile.

#3: Jeremy Guthrie

#4: Luis Mendoza

#5: Bruce Chen

#6: Jake Odorizzi

#7: Will Smith

Let’s stop for a second and ask, yet again, how on Earth can the Royals bring back Luke Hochevar?

It’s not just the 5.73 ERA in 2012 (the second-worst of any qualifier, behind only Ricky Romero) or the career 5.39 ERA. About that career ERA…oh, you guys are going to love this:

WORST CAREER ERA, MLB HISTORY, MINIMUM 125 STARTS

1. Kyle Davies, 5.59 ERA

2. Luke Hochevar, 5.39 ERA

3. Who the hell cares? Just look at #1 and #2 again

So yeah…Luke Hochevar. But setting aside for a moment just how bad he is…if the Royals bring him back, where exactly is the improvement in the rotation going to come from?

If Hochevar returns, that means there’s only one open spot in the rotation – unless you move Mendoza or Chen to the bullpen, which seems to me to be a waste of resources. Mendoza’s too good, and Chen doesn’t have the skill set to be a lefty specialist (LHB have a higher OPS against Chen than RHB for his entire career, which is quite unusual).

Whereas if you let Hochevar go, not only do you save $5 million in payroll, but you open up two spots for newcomers. The Royals have telegraphed that they’re willing to bring in at least one free agent, and are willing to explore trade possibilities to bring in one more. But if Hochevar returns, then you’ll wind up with a situation where either Mendoza or Chen – both of whom are better pitchers than Hochevar – have to move to the bullpen to accommodate him.

In the grand calculus of whether to bring Hochevar back, this pales compared to the consequence that bringing back Luke Hochevar means BRINGING BACK LUKE HOCHEVAR. But it’s just another reason to let him go. I’m an optimist, and I’m stubborn, so I continue to believe that the Royals will open their eyes to the harsh light of reality long enough to see what everyone else sees. But I admit that at this point, it’s a belief based more on faith than on evidence.

(It’s quite possible that Hochevar’s fate is tied to Guthrie’s. If Guthrie doesn’t re-sign, then the Royals would be left needing to fill three holes in their rotation instead of two, in which case they could easily talk themselves into sticking with the devil they know for one of those spots. All the more reason to get a deal done with Guthrie.)

Either way, the Royals need two pitchers to fill the #1 and #2 spots in their rotation. They won’t necessarily be “#1” and “#2” starters – the only #1 starter on the free agent market is Zack Greinke. But they need to be at least #3-plus, guys the caliber of Guthrie or better. The Royals can go to war next year with a #2, #3, #3, #4, #5 rotation and still hope to win. They just can’t go to war with what they had this year, with their two potential #2 starters both blowing out their elbows, and being left with a #4, #5, and a parade of #6s and #7s.

So if we are agreed that the Royals need to acquire two quality starting pitchers between now and February, let’s explore some options.

The two main categories to look at are free agent pitchers and trade candidates, but today I want to look at a third, largely-overlooked category, because I think there’s at least one gem there to be had there.

Both types of pitching acquisitions come with a downside. In the case of free agent pitchers, to sign the best ones, you almost always have to give them too many years, or too much money, or both – while they may improve your team in the short term, you’re going to feel some heartburn by the end of the contract.

In the case of going the trade route, while you might get a young pitcher who is still improving, and while you might not have to pay him nearly as much money, it’s going to cost you prospects – and for a truly impact pitcher, it’s going to cost you a LOT of prospects. Yes, the Nationals got Gio Gonzalez and he’s fantastic, and they’ve signed him for at least four more years. But they gave up Tom Milone and Derek Norris and A.J. Cole and Brad Peacock. Yeah, the Reds got Mat Latos – but did you see what Yasmani Grandal did in San Diego as a rookie?

But what if I told you that the Royals could acquire an established, quality starting pitcher, without surrendering any top prospects, and who would only require a one-year contract commitment? You’d be interested, wouldn’t you?

They can. It just requires them to be creative.

There are a number of starting pitchers around baseball whose current teams have club options for 2013. Bob Dutton mentions some of them in his column: Dan Haren, Tim Hudson, Jake Peavy, Ervin Santana, and James Shields. Hudson’s contract will probably be picked up by Atlanta; Shields (who actually has options for two more years) will certainly get picked up by Tampa Bay, at least until they trade him.

The White Sox have already indicated that they will not pick up Jake Peavy’s option. This, even though Peavy was healthy in 2012 for the first time in four years and had a terrific season: 219 innings, a 3.37 ERA in a hitters’ park, 194 Ks and just 48 walks. His option is for $22 million, which gives you pause, but consider that the White Sox owe him a $4 million buyout if they don’t pick up his option. So the marginal cost to them is $18 million. If it were me, with the White Sox’s payroll, I’d pay the extra $18 million to keep Peavy for one year. The White Sox seem to think they can decline the option and sign Peavy to a longer-term deal. Even if they couldn’t, they’re not about to trade Peavy to an in-division rival. So he’s out.

But then look over in Anaheim, where the Angels have Dan Haren and Ervin Santana. The Angels have options on both players for 2013. Santana has an option for $13 million (with a $1 million buyout) and Haren has an option for $15.5 million (with a $3.5 million buyout). Take out the buyouts, which the Angels have to pay either way, and they can keep either player on essentially a 1-year, $12 million contract.

As reported here, the Angels are inclined to let them both go.

Now, in Santana’s case that’s understandable. He did, after all, have a 5.16 ERA this year, and led the AL with 39 homers allowed. However, Santana was much better in the second half after some mechanical changes to fix his slider. From July 30th until his next-to-last start of the season, he had a 3.08 ERA in 10 starts, with 42 hits and 16 walks allowed in 64 innings. (He did get hammered in his last start.)

Selective endpoints can make even Luke Hochevar look good, but in the context of his career, 2012 is the anomaly for Santana – he had a 3.38 ERA in 2011, a 3.92 ERA in 2010, and threw over 220 innings each year. He’s definitely on my list of second-tier free agents who would be good gambles in the $5-8 million range. Only having to make a one-year commitment would be tempting, but at $12 million, you might be better off waiting until he’s a free agent and offering him $16 million for two years instead.

But then there’s Dan Haren. The same Dan Haren who has a 3.66 career ERA, including a 3.33 ERA from 2007 to 2011. The same Dan Haren who led the AL in strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.00) just last year, and led the NL in both 2008 and 2009. The same Dan Haren who made at least 33 starts and threw at least 216 innings every year from 2005 to 2011.

You’ll notice the timeframes I mentioned in the last paragraph ended in 2011, because this season, Haren dealt with some back issues that affected both his ability and his availability. But even this year, even dealing with back problems, Haren made 30 starts, had a 4.33 ERA, and in 177 innings, struck out 142 batters against 35 walks (a ratio of better than 4-to-1). In 2011, he struck out 20% of the batters he faced; this year that ratio dropped all the way to 19%.

His ERA jumped because he was more hittable (his BABIP jumped from .276 to .306) and because more flyballs left the yard (12.8%, vs. 7.5% last year). There’s a lot of variability in both of those stats, so he’s likely to improve in both regards next year. While the back problems can be worrisome, I’m much more worried about them with hitters – they can sap you of your power permanently, as they did with Don Mattingly and, to a lesser extent, Mike Sweeney – than with pitchers. Randy Johnson won his first Cy Young Award in 1995, then missed half of the 1996 season with back problems – and then came back in 1997 at full strength, finishing 2nd in the Cy Young vote.

And for what it’s worth, Haren pitched much better after a brief DL stint around the All-Star Break – he made 13 starts after he returned, with a  3.58 ERA, and in 73 innings he allowed just 68 hits and 14 walks. In his last seven starts, he walked 5 batters in 42 innings, and struck out 34.

There is some risk here – notably, the Angels play in a very strong pitchers’ park, which means he might be worse than he looks. On the other hand, he actually pitched better on the road (3.95 ERA) than at home (4.68 ERA) this year.

To me, this is a no-brainer. If Dan Haren goes on the free agent market, he’s getting a three-year deal as a bare minimum. To get him on a one-year, $12 million deal is a steal – and yet, that seems to be in play. The Angels are planning to decline his option and get nothing in return – if the Royals offer them even a modest package of talent, and only ask that the Angels pick up the buyout portion of his contract, why wouldn’t they say yes? They’re getting something instead of nothing.

The more I analyze the trades that teams make, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important step in making good trades is to find the right teams to trade with. There are always teams that, for whatever reason, don’t know what they are doing at the moment – their front office is either incompetent or dysfunctional. Consider how the Royals were able to turn Jonathan Sanchez into Jeremy Guthrie – the Rockies don’t seem to have a clue what they’re doing, and announced a restructuring of their front office during the season that hasn’t clarified anything.

Once upon a time, the Red Sox had the most competent front office in the game. By the time the lights went down on last season, the knives had come out, owners were backstabbing managers, GMs were fleeing the scene, players were being outed for eating fried chicken in the clubhouse…you think it’s a coincidence that the Sox got absolutely fleeced by the A’s (Bailey for Reddick+) and Astros (Lowrie for Melancon)?

It brings to mind the classic opening line to the movie “Rounders”: “Listen, here’s the thing. If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then YOU are the sucker.” (I think Allard Baird is still trying to spot the sucker, actually.)

If you’re not convinced that the other team in a trade negotiation doesn’t know what they’re doing, you have to at least consider the possibility that YOU don’t know what you’re doing.

If this were the Tampa Bay Rays talking about declining Dan Haren’s option, I’d be very concerned that they know something the rest of us don’t. But it’s not the Rays; it’s the Angels, who have a very competent GM in Jerry DiPoto, but also seem to be going through a power struggle at the moment between DiPoto and manager Mike Scioscia, with an impatient owner (Arte Moreno) who wants to know why all the millions he spent on Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson didn’t lead to a playoff spot this year. So the fact that the Angels seem prepared to decline what should be a gimme option for Dan Haren doesn’t worry me all that much.

Instead, it strikes me as a golden opportunity for the Royals to buy low, acquiring a true #2 starter while only having to make a one-year commitment, and giving up precious little talent to do so. The Angels were done in this year by a very leaky bullpen – their bullpen finished 12th in the AL in ERA, despite pitching in a very good pitchers’ park. So maybe offer them, I dunno, Louis Coleman? In 111 career innings, Coleman has 129 strikeouts and a 3.25 ERA, and he’d be under club control for five years. If the Angels are letting Haren go anyway, why not get a pitcher who could work in the seventh inning for you for the next half-decade? And from the Royals’ perspective, would they really miss Coleman at all?

Those of you who have listened to me on 810 WHB this season have probably already heard me make the case for Dan Haren – a few weeks ago I even “predicted” that Haren would be the Royals’ Opening Day starter next year when Soren Petro asked me to give him a name. It wasn’t a forecast so much as a wishcast, but there’s no reason why it can’t happen. All it requires is some out-of-the-box thinking.

This is the move Dayton Moore needs to make, and needs to make now. Jeremy Guthrie can wait. Trading three Top Ten prospects for James Shields or Josh Johnson can wait. You can’t even talk to free agent pitchers until November. But right now, you can add a premium starting pitcher to your 2013 rotation, and neither break your payroll nor dip into your farm system. Do it now, Dayton. Before some other GM does.

2013 Is Our Time. Or Else.

What’s high in the middle and round on both ends? Yes, Ohio. But also, the 2012 Kansas City Royals. The Royals were determined to finish the season as poorly as they started it. But between their 3-14 start and their 2-9 finish, the Royals went 67-67. They were a .500 team for 83% of the season. Progress!

(That’s the longest stretch in which the Royals have played .500 or better in almost four years. From May 31st, 2008 through May 7th, 2009, the Royals were 71-64. In other words, the Royals are almost as good in Dayton Moore’s sixth full season on the job as they were in his second season on the job. So not really progress, no.)

Despite the Royals fade at the end, I remain completely convinced that they can contend in 2013. You might chalk this up to my boundless and perpetually irrational optimism, but my buoyancy comes with some rough edges. By that, I mean that I expect the Royals to contend in 2013, and you should too, whether your name is Joe Smith or, say, David Glass. Dayton Moore has been on the job for OVER SIX YEARS, and whatever the condition of the franchise when he took the job, there is no team in the history of baseball – or at least in the history of the Draft Era, beginning in 1965 – that couldn’t be turned around in seven years. The 2003 Tigers lost 119 games, and were in the World Series three years later.

The Kansas City Royals won 71 games last year. The Baltimore Orioles won 69 games. The Orioles play in the AL East. The Orioles’ farm system was so weak compared to the Royals that going into the 2011 season, Kevin Goldstein remarked that the Royals’ #18 prospect (who was, incidentally, Salvador Perez) would have ranked THIRD in the Orioles system.

The Baltimore Orioles are in the playoffs in 2012. Yes, I know that they have been the luckiest team in close games in, roughly, the history of baseball. (Their 29-9 record in one-run games is the best since 1900.) But they also have a positive run differential. They’ve improved steadily as the season progressed. They have a manager – a manager who I routinely put at the top of my list every time the Royals had a managerial opening over the last 10 years – who pushes every right button. Maybe it’s magic, but there’s nothing in the Collective Bargaining Agreement that prohibits magic. The Orioles are in the postseason, and anything can happen.

And then there’s Oakland. Of course there is. The A’s have been the polar opposite of the Royals since Sandy Alderson was the GM and Billy Beane was a fourth outfielder. The A’s are the team of Moneyball; the Royals, as I outlined in my last article, have been the most anti-Moneyball team in the major leagues for the last quarter-century. It’s not just the walks, although of course they have the fewest walks in baseball over that span. It’s the attitude that the Royals have towards using modern baseball theory.

To give you an example: the A’s won 74 games last year, and quite reasonably decided that a 74-win team didn’t need an elite closer. So Andrew Bailey, who in three seasons with the A’s had a 2.47 ERA and 81 saves, was traded to Boston for three young players. The Royals, who won fewer than 74 games year after year despite having a better closer than Andrew Bailey, chose to hold on to Joakim Soria because of some mystical notion that a great closer was like a security blanket, and that if they forced another pitcher into the ninth inning role, the psyche of the entire bullpen would collapse. So they kept Soria, and wound up with bupkis.

Meanwhile, without Soria this season, the bullpen nevertheless had the best season in franchise history. Greg Holland was forced into the closer’s role after Jonathan Broxton was traded, and was so traumatized by the pressure that he saved his first 13 opportunities.

This has nothing to do with OBP or WAR or stats in general. These are simple principles espoused by baseball analysts: even the best relievers are unpredictable. The impact of even an elite reliever on a bad team is minimal. When a bad team has an elite reliever, the benefit of keeping him pales compared to the potential benefit of trading him.

One team – the Oakland A’s – embraces this philosophy, and traded Andrew Bailey for Josh Reddick, Miles Head, and Raul Alcantara. Bailey was hurt and missed the first half of the season, then finished with a 7.04 ERA in 15 innings. Reddick, meanwhile, hit .242/.305/.463 and swatted 32 home runs this year. Head and Alcantara remain interesting prospects.

Another team – the Kansas City Royals – clings to the long-outdated notion that there’s a psychological benefit in having a closer you can rely on, even if your team isn’t very good. They kept Joakim Soria, and for their efforts they were rewarded with a $6 million contract for a pitcher who missed the season with Tommy John surgery.

Last year, the A’s won 74 games. True, the Royals have only won 74 games once since Dayton Moore was hired, but work with me here – the A’s weren’t fundamentally any better than the Royals a year ago. (The Royals actually had a better run differential – they were outscored by 32 runs, while the A’s were outscored by 34 runs.) As mentioned above, they then traded their closer. THEY ALSO TRADED THEIR TWO BEST STARTING PITCHERS FOR PROSPECTS.

They traded Gio Gonzalez to the Nationals, and in return received four prospects. Tom Milone, a soft-tossing lefty with impeccable control, was dropped into their rotation this year and made 31 starts, threw 190 innings, and had a 3.74 ERA. Derek Norris, a catcher out of the Mickey Tettleton mold, started the year in Triple-A, hit .271/.329/.477, and was promoted to Oakland. He hasn’t played great for the A’s – he hit .201/.276/.349 this year – but unlike a certain second baseman in Kansas City, they didn’t bury him when he failed to hit right out of the chute, and this afternoon he hit a home run in the A’s victory.

Milone and Norris, incidentally, were considered the two worst prospects in the trade. Pitchers A.J. Cole and Brad Peacock are farther away, but both have mid-rotation upside. (In fairness, Peacock took a step back this year.)

And the A’s traded Trevor Cahill to the Arizona Diamondbacks for, essentially, Jarrod Parker, with Ryan Cook tossed in. Parker, a highly-touted prospect who was drafted 9th overall, had missed all of 2010 with Tommy John surgery, and was still in Double-A last season. Yet as a rookie, Parker outpitched Cahill this year, with a 3.47 ERA in 181 innings for the A’s. Cook made the All-Star team as a rookie set-up man, finishing with a 2.09 ERA in 73 innings.

Throw in an aggressive move to sign Yoenis Cespedes, the emergence of Chris Carter, some shrewd platooning (Yes! Platooning! What a radical concept!) of guys like Jonny Gomes and Brandon Moss and Seth Smith, underrated mid-season acquisitions like George Kottaras and Stephen Drew, and you have Billy Beane’s finest performance yet. The Oakland A’s, winners of 74 games last year, 37-42 and 13 games out at the end of June this year, are AL West Champions.

SO DON’T TELL ME THE ROYALS CAN’T WIN NEXT SEASON. The time for low expectations is over. The time for excuses is over. If the Royals don’t have a winning record in 2013, then Dayton Moore shouldn’t have a job.

Fortunately for him, the Royals are well positioned to have a winning record in 2013. It shouldn’t be hard to upgrade their production in right field, for instance. And it also shouldn’t be hard to upgrade their rotation. But for 25 years, nothing has been easy for this organization. So I’m here to help. In the coming weeks, I’ll be reviewing the many starting pitchers available this off-season, whether by trade or free agency.

But before the Royals can analyze the market for starting pitchers, they need to do a good hard analysis of the starting pitchers they already have. And by that, I mean they need to cut Luke Hochevar, who wrapped a pretty bow around his season with a 9.56 ERA. He might have done us all an enormous favor; after Dayton Moore issued his vote of confidence for Hochevar, Luke finished with an 8.25 ERA in his last four starts. Judging from Moore’s comments on TV last night, he might just be re-considering his perpetual defense of Hochevar. We can hope, anyway.

Of course, in the same interview, Moore was asked whether he thought Miguel Cabrera or Mike Trout was the deserving MVP. As Buster Olney wrote (and Bob Dutton confirmed), with one exception, EVERY front office person he’s interviewed has said that they'd (correctly, in my not-so-humble opinion) vote for Trout, who is nearly Cabrera’s equal with the bat and is vastly superior with his legs and glove.

Moore, naturally, picked Cabrera, because he won the Triple Crown, and by the statistical standards we used in 1975, that makes him the best player. Only it’s not 1975 anymore. The A’s led the way into the 21st century, and are going to the playoffs in a year in which even their most fervent supporters thought was a rebuilding year. The Royals lag behind, and they’ve treaded water in a year in which most people thought they’d take a step forward.

This isn’t rocket science, people. As the A’s have shown, an analytical approach to baseball works. As the Royals have shown – over and over and over again – the opposite approach doesn’t. If Dayton Moore’s methods fail to yield results one more time, it will be time to bring in someone else. Someone, preferably, who is willing to use all the weapons at his disposal – scouts and stats alike – to build a winning franchise.

It's Not The Fans Who Are Impatient, Dayton.

(One correction to my last column – I wrote that the Royals didn’t sign any of their young players to long-term deals during the Herk Robinson & Allard Baird years. I forgot one player did, in fact, receive an eight-figure contract early in his sophomore season: Angel Berroa. I regret the error. The error of signing Angel Berroa, of course.)

This is one of the easiest columns for me to write, because I could have written it at any point this century, and in fact I have written variations of this column from time to time. On the other hand, this column is difficult to write, because reliving three decades of Royals incompetence is never easy.

1981: 10th (301 BB – strike-shortened season)

1982: 13th (442 BB)

1983: 14th (397 BB). Every other MLB team had at least 436 walks.)

Once upon a time, the Royals were a patient team. In 1972 – 40 years ago – the Royals led the American League in walks. They finished second in the league in walks in 1973, and third in 1974. Before the 1972 season, Royals’ GM Cedric Tallis made one of his annual player robberies at the Winter Meetings, stealing John Mayberry from the Astros for nothing. Mayberry was the Travis Hafner of his generation, an unathletic first baseman who was given up on by his original team because they didn’t appreciate the fact that he had both the power to crush a meaty pitch and the discipline to lay off the other ones.

In 1971, Mayberry had hit just .182/.260/.350 for the Astros; the year before he had hit .216/.318/.365. But he was just 22 when he was traded, and in the previous two years, in 134 games at Triple-A, he had drawn 92 walks and had a .420 OBP. Basically, Mayberry was exactly the type of player that the Royals have traded away for the last quarter-century. But in 1972, they acquired him instead. Mayberry is probably the most patient hitter in Royals history; he led the AL in walks twice, going over 110 walks each year. Aside from Darrell Porter in 1979, no other Royals has accomplished either feat once.

As recently as 1980, the Royals ranked a comfortable 6th in the AL in walks drawn. No Royal drew even 70 walks that year, but five different players drew at least 50.

1984: 14th (400 BB) – every other team in the majors had at least 420 walks.

1985: 12th (473 BB) – Last in AL with 416 UIBB

1986: 13th (474 BB)

But the seeds were already being sown for a generation of free-swingers. Two of the integral members of the 1980 Royals, Frank White and Willie Wilson, were excellent overall players despite not being aware that you were allowed to walk to first base if the pitcher threw four pitches out of the strike zone that you didn’t swing at.

White was the Royals’ everyday second baseman from 1976 through 1985 without ever drawing even 30 walks in a season. He finally learned some semblance of plate discipline in his mid-30s, drawing 43 walks in 1986 and 51 walks in 1987, and not coincidentally had two of his best seasons. Wilson played 19 years in the majors, and never drew 40 walks in a season. This was particularly absurd given that Wilson, in his prime, was one of the fastest ballplayers who ever lived. The man once hit five inside-the-park home runs in a single season – you would think that either Wilson or the Royals would recognize that his priority should be to get to first base by any means necessary, and let his speed take over from there.

Granted, at the time, the importance of walks as a means of getting on base – hell, the importance of getting on base – was not properly appreciated by the baseball establishment. The Royals were hardly alone in this.

Tracy Ringolsby, a fine Kansas City sportswriter who reaches a national audience through The Sporting News and Baseball America, wrote last winter, while comparing Willie Wilson to Rickey Henderson, that the biggest difference between the two was that Henderson had more power. In view of the fact that Henderson walks 106 times per 162 games played and Wilson walks 32 times, that statement is fairly preposterous. It’s quite a bit like saying that Twiggy and Dolly Parton are built about the same except that Twiggy is a half-inch taller. – Bill James, 1985 Baseball Abstract

But while the industry didn’t appreciate walks as much as they should have, no team appreciated them less than the Royals. By 1983, the Royals were dead last in the majors with 397 walks. Not one player drew even 50 walks of the unintentional variety. The 1983 Royals walked less than any other team from 1982 to 1992. Second on the list? The 1984 Royals.

In 1985, the Royals jumped all the way to 12th place in the AL in walks, but even that number was deceptive. In 1985, George Brett had one of his best seasons, and unlike earlier in his career, there was almost no one else in the lineup who was a threat. As a result, Brett was intentionally walked 31 times that year. Between 1958 and 2009, only one other AL player was given as many free passes – John Olerud (!) in 1993. The Royals led the AL in intentional walks – if you remove them from the equation, they were once again last in the AL in walks.

But they won the World Series, and never mind that their championship was due to fantastic starting pitching, a weak division, and some postseason luck. If the Royals could win a world championship without drawing any walks, then they must not be that important, right?

1987: 10th (523 BB)

1988: 9th (486 BB)

1989: 5th (554 BB)

In 1989, almost by accident, the Royals finished 5th in the AL in walks. The team still had its free swingers; White and Wilson were still playing regularly, and Bo Jackson walked 39 times, which I suppose was pretty good for a guy who went straight from the gridiron to the major leagues. But the Royals had acquired Danny Tartabull from the Mariners two years earlier, and Tartabull was always a patient hitter. And they had Kevin Seitzer.

Since Porter led the AL with 121 walks in 1979, only twice has a Royals player drawn even 90 walks in a season. Think about that for a second. Since 1980, a player has drawn 90 walks for his team 391 times – about 13 times for each franchise. The Phillies have had 27 ninety-walk seasons since 1980. The Indians had four players draw 90 walks – in 1999 alone.

Every other team in the majors has had more 90-walk seasons since 1980 than the Royals.

And one of those seasons, again, was George Brett in 1985, when he was walked intentionally 31 times – and 72 times of his own accord. Brett didn’t draw 103 walks that year because he was patient – he drew 103 walks because he was awesome.

But in 1989, Kevin Seitzer walked 102 times, and only seven were intentional. Frankly, it’s surprising he got that many intentional walks – while he hit .281 that year, he had no power to speak of, slugging .337. He earned his walks, and thanks to them, he put up an OBP north of .380 for the third straight year.

Naturally, a year and a half later he was on the bench because Hal McRae didn’t like his defense at third base. The following spring, Seitzer was released a week before Opening Day. If the Royals thought he was done, they miscalculated; he played six more years in the majors. He played five years with the Brewers, and hit .300/.376/.422 for them.

If you’re wondering why I’ve been such a strong supporter of Kevin Seitzer as the team’s hitting coach, wonder no more. In the last 30 years, he is quite literally the only player the Royals have employed who embraced the base on balls as an offensive weapon.

1990: 10th (498 BB)

1991: 10th (523 BB)

1992: 13th (439 BB)

1993: 14th (428 BB) – every other AL team had at least 483 walks.

In 1989, the Royals won 92 games, the most the franchise has won since 1980 – yes, more than they won in 1985. In 1989, the Royals drew more walks relative to the league than any other Royals team since 1980. This is not a coincidence.

Unfortunately, it was an anomaly. The Royals went back to their free-swinging ways the next year; by 1993, they were such hackers that they spotted every other AL team 55 walks – that’s one every three games.

1994: 12th (376 BB)

1995: 13th (475 BB)

1996: 12th (529 BB)

1997: 9th (561 BB)

The Royals have ranked in the bottom half of the American League in walks drawn for 22 consecutive seasons, from 1990 to 2011. They’ve ranked in the bottom half in walks drawn for 30 of the last 31 years, with 1989 the only outlier between 1981 and 2011.

1998: 12th (475 BB)

1999: 10th (535 BB)

2000: 14th (511 BB) – every other team in the AL had at least 526 walks.

2001: 14th (406 BB) – every other team in the majors had at least 456 walks.

And if anything, the problem is only getting worse over time. From 1981 through 1999, the Royals ranked at least 10th in the AL in walks eight times. Since the turn of the century, they’ve done so only three times in 13 years. Since 2000, the Royals are more likely to finish dead last in the AL in walks (four times) than finish 10th or higher (three times).

2002: 8th (524 BB)

2003: 10th (476 BB)

2004: 13th (461 BB)

2005: 12th (424 BB)

2006: 11th (474 BB)

Even more amazing is this: since 1998, when Jose Offerman walked 89 times, not a single Royals player has drawn more than 72 walks in a season. Carlos Beltran’s 72 walks in 2003 represents the franchise’s high-water mark for this century.

Since 1999, a player has drawn 73+ walks a total of 473 times, including 12 players already this year. EVERY SINGLE TEAM IN THE MAJORS HAS DONE IT AT LEAST EIGHT TIMES. Except the Royals. They haven’t done it once.

2007: 13th (428 BB)

2008: 14th (392 BB) – every other team in the majors had at least 417 walks.

2009: 13th (457 BB)

2010: 9th – tie (471 BB) – the Royals were closer to 13th than 8th.

2011: 11th - tie (442) – the Royals were just 7 out of last place.

And in 2012, it’s more of the same, if not worse. With six games to go, the Royals have drawn 381 walks. They are 35 walks behind every other team in the majors – the Red Sox (!) have 416. They need to draw 20 walks in their last six games in order to get over 400. If they don’t, they would be just the 12th team in the last 30 years to walk 400 times or fewer in a full season. But they’d be the fourth Royals team in the last 30 years.

It might even be worse than that. The Royals actually rank third in the AL in intentional walks – Jeff Francoeur, hysterically, has received a free pass nine times. I’ve been Seitzer’s biggest fan, and this time last year he looked like a hitting savant. But here we are, and for the 23rd consecutive season, and the 31st time in the last 32 years, the Royals are below average in walks. For the eighth time in 32 years, they rank dead last in the league. Either Seitzer isn’t preaching patience, the hitters aren’t listening, or they’re just not capable.

You have to hope there’s room for improvement. Francoeur will be replaced by Wil Myers at some point, and Myers has generally shown good plate discipline in the minors. Yuniesky Betancourt is gone. But beyond that, it’s hard to see how the Royals will improve to the point where they’re above league average in the next few years.

Salvador Perez and Alcides Escobar will probably never walk in 10% of their plate appearances – like Frank White and Willie Wilson before them, that doesn’t mean they’re not excellent all-around players, but it is a weakness in their game. Mike Moustakas’ career high for walks in the minors was 43 – he’s a free swinger, and while I think his walk rate will go up as his power develops (because pitchers will be afraid to challenge him), he’s likely to always be an early-in-the-count swinger. Lorenzo Cain’s walk rates in the minors were average at best; he’s probably a 40 or 50-walk guy at his peak.

Johnny Giavotella has been a disappointment in a number of ways, but consider this: in the minor leagues, he drew 238 walks against 2091 at-bats. In the majors, he has 14 walks against 349 at-bats. His walk rate has dropped 62% with the Royals. Plate discipline is such a low priority for the organization that a reasonably patient hitter in the minor leagues can turn into Angel Berroa once he gets to The Show.

If there’s hope for improvement, it rests with Eric Hosmer, who despite a nightmare of the season has upped his walks from 34 to 56 this season. He had a reputation for great strike zone knowledge in the minors; if he fixes his swing to the point where pitchers have to work him carefully, he could be the first Royal since the 1980s to draw 90 walks.

And then there’s Alex Gordon, who is clearly the most (and possibly only) patient hitter in the lineup, with 67 walks each of the last two years. It is partially for that reason that I think he should have been left alone in the leadoff spot in the lineup. Instead, the Royals moved him back to the #3 spot, because they see him more as a “run producer”, and never mind that it’s difficult to produce runs when there aren’t any runners on base for you to drive home.

But here’s why I’m worried. This year, in the leadoff spot, Gordon drew 39 walks against 335 at-bats, a healthy ratio that led to a .379 OBP. But since moving down to #3, he has drawn just 13 walks against 164 at-bats, a 30% drop in his walk rate. Not surprisingly, his OBP is down to .330.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I’m skeptical that the Royals are going to fix their plate discipline problem anytime soon. The Royals have taken the only patient hitter in their lineup, moved him to a lineup spot in which his on-base skills are not nearly as appreciated, and he’s responded by abandoning his signature skill in order to be a better fit in his new spot.

The Royals are fourth in the AL in batting average. But thanks to their lack of walks, they’re just 9th in the league in OBP, and 12th in the league in runs scored.

As the 1985 Royals showed, it is possible to win while being among the most impatient teams in baseball. But as the 1986 through 2012 Royals have shown, it is also immensely difficult. If the Royals make it a point of emphasis of ending their decades-long streak of not giving a damn about walks, it will make ending their other streak – their 27 playoff-free seasons in a row, the longest streak in American professional sports – a lot easier.

2013 Top Prospects: #1

For the second straight season, the Royals have played well enough in the second half to give us legitimate reason to think that, with an off-season of maturation and a few savvy roster additions, they might be ready to contend next year. Since the All-Star Break, the Royals have scored more runs (285) than they’ve allowed (284).

Unfortunately, last year they also scored more runs than they allowed after the All-Star Break (328-313), and we saw how well that turned out.

Still, the Royals have basically been a .500 team on paper since the Break, which not coincidentally is around the time they got Salvador Perez (and Lorenzo Cain) healthy and jettisoned the likes of Jonathan Sanchez and Yuniesky Betancourt. In the AL Central, where 89 wins will probably take the division this year, there is absolutely no excuse for a .500 team to go into the off-season without a firm expectation that they will contend next year. Particularly a team with the youngest offense in the majors for the second straight year, and a team that won’t lose a single meaningful player off its roster to free agency (with the exception of Jeremy Guthrie, I suppose.)

All this talk about 2014 is, frankly, a cop-out. The Royals can win in 2013 if they make the right moves. It is therefore incumbent that they make the right moves.

So in the limited time that I have to devote to this blog, I plan to focus on a few big things. The “For Want of a Pitcher” series is scheduled to return soon, looking at the many, many options the Royals have to upgrade their rotation between now and spring training. I’ll be grading out the current roster once the season ends, figuring out who should stay and who should go. And I’ll be breaking down the Royals’ top prospects as time allows. Aside from being an endeavor I particularly enjoy – dreaming about the future is always more fun than lamenting the present – if the Royals are going to acquire quality starting pitchers, they’re probably going to trade prospects at some point. If they’re going to trade prospects, then it’s a good idea to know which prospects are disposable and which ones are untouchable.

Writing about prospects also makes it easier for me to artificially raise my article count – rather than writing about them 10 or 15 at a time, I might write about them 2 or 3 at a time and get my evaluations in your hands that much faster. Or, like today, I might write about just one of them.

#1: Wil Myers

Pos-B: RF-R

H-W: 6’3”, 205 lb

DOB: 12/10/1990 (Age 21)

Signed: 3rd Round, 2009, NC HS ($2 million)

Overall Rank in Baseball: Top 5

Stats:

2009: .315/.429/.506 in low A/high A

2010: .254/.353/.393 in AA

2011: .314/.387/.600 in AA/AAA

It’s not exactly a stretch to put Myers at #1; he is Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year, the third Royal to be so honored (after Tom Gordon and Alex Gordon). It’s important to note that he’s not the best prospect in baseball – the award is given to the top prospect who had the best season, but that’s not necessarily the same thing. Jurickson Profar, who didn’t have the numbers Myers did but is 19 years old and a quality shortstop, is a better prospect. Oscar Taveras probably is. Dylan Bundy, even though he’s a pitcher, probably is.

But after those three, there’s no one clearly better. Myers rebounded from his injury-plagued 2011 and then some, a rebound which started in the Arizona Fall League. He hit 37 home runs, finishing second in the minors, and actually led the minors if you count his postseason exploits. He hits for average, he walks a fair amount, and he has enough defensive versatility that the Royals played him at third base 15 times for reasons not clearly evident. (Myers actually played 87 games in center field, and only 18 in right. But he’s a right fielder, if not right away then soon enough.)

Meanwhile, with Lorenzo Cain out for the rest of the year, the Royals are platooning Jason Bourgeois and David Lough.

You might think that I’m upset with this arrangement, with the Royals giving playing time to a pair of non-prospects while their best prospect, who has destroyed pitching at the highest levels of the minors, got sent home after Omaha was eliminated from the PCL finals. You would be wrong.

I was annoyed with the Royals for not bringing him up in July, or even in early August, when it was clear that he had passed every reasonable hurdle in the minor leagues. But given that the moment has passed, I think it would be a waste of resources to bring Myers up in September. For one, the Royals aren’t playing for anything. The Rangers and Orioles are, which is why Profar and (now) Bundy are both in the majors. If those teams were buried under .500, they would have left their prized prospects in the minor leagues as well.

The Royals have publicly stated that roster issues have forced their hand in keeping Myers in Triple-A. As the prospect wave continues to mature, the Royals have a lot of players who will become eligible for the Rule 5 draft this winter if they are not protected on the 40-man roster. Because Myers was drafted out of high school in 2009, he is not eligible for the Rule 5 draft, so keeping him in the minors and off the 40-man roster opens up a spot for someone who might otherwise be left off and drafted by another team. Whereas someone like Jake Odorizzi, who was drafted in 2008, IS eligible for the Rule 5 draft, needs to be added to the 40-man roster anyway – so he got called up.

There’s nothing wrong with this line of thinking, but I think it’s more a convenient excuse for the real reason than anything else. The real reason to keep Myers on the farm is – or should be – that you have a chance to delay free agency by a year. In order to do that, though, it’s not enough to keep Myers in the minors all of this season – it also means starting next season with Myers in Triple-A, at least for about three weeks.

As well as he played this season, I thought that it would be almost impossible to justify sending him back to Omaha to start next year, which is why I was agitating for him to get called up around the All-Star Break. But having made it this far, there’s a chance the Royals can pull it off. They did so two years ago with Mike Moustakas, who was nearly as dominant as Myers has been. Moustakas hit .322/.369/.630 between Double-A and Triple-A, but in Triple-A hit .293/.314/.564. More importantly, in 52 games he walked just eight times – that was sufficient reason to send him back to start last season, to work on his plate discipline.

Myers didn’t really have that problem – after his promotion to Omaha, he hit .304/.378/.554, and walked a healthy 45 times in 99 games. He did strike out 98 times, and 140 times for the season. That’s not an enormous total, but the Royals have conveniently focused on his strikeout rate as proof that he still has things to work on. Myers had never struck out even 100 times in a season before 2012. He had also never hit even 15 home runs in a season, but if that’s the argument that succeeds in getting him back to Omaha for a refresher next spring, we can overlook the logical fallacy embedded in it.

It’s hardly a lock that Myers will go back to Triple-A at all. I imagine the plan is that he’ll come to spring training “with a chance to win a job”, as it were. But for that to happen, 1) he’ll have to rake in March and 2) Jeff Francoeur will have to look even worse than he has all of 2012. As aggravating as it is that Frenchy is still on the books for 2013 (at $7.5 million!), his presence and that contract will give the Royals the opening they need to send Myers back to Omaha to start the year. It means that Francoeur basically gets the month of April to plead his case for his job, and if he doesn’t hit out of the gate, Myers gets his job by Mother’s Day. Will it be a buzzkill to see Francoeur in right field on Opening Day? Yes. Is it worth losing a few weeks of Myers when he’s 22 to get another year of service time from him when he’ll be 28 (and essentially at his peak)? Absolutely.

Still, this whole situation puts the Royals in a very awkward position, one in which they’re essentially rooting for their best prospect to not play too well and force their hand. Fortunately, I have an idea that eliminates this problem and is a win-win for everyone involved.

Five years ago, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had a similar problem on their hand. Evan Longoria, who like Myers today was 21 years old, had completed a fantastic minor league season, hitting .307/.403/.528 between Double-A and Triple-A. He hadn’t advanced quite as far as Myers had – he only played 31 games in Triple-A, and hit .269/.398/.490 there – but he was also a superior defensive third baseman. He had entered the season as Baseball America’s #7 prospect in the land, and was #2 overall when the rankings came out the next spring. It was very clear in spring training 2008 that Longoria was ready for the major leagues.

Instead, the Rays (they had just dropped the Devil) sent Longoria back to Triple-A Durham to start the year. It looked like a clear manipulation of service time, especially when they called him up after he had played just SEVEN games there (and was just 5-for-25). Longoria made his major-league debut on April 12th, just two days past the point at which he would have qualified for free agency a year early. It looked to the outside layman like Longoria might even have a grievance on his hands.

Longoria never filed a grievance, because he was too busy negotiating a long-term contract. On April 18th – six days into his major-league career – Longoria signed a six-year contract with the Rays with three option years. He was guaranteed $17 million over the six years, and a maximum of $44 million if all the options were exercised. Obviously, the negotiations had started before Longoria had been called up.  His demotion to Triple-A to start the year was only a formality until the contract was finalized.

The Rays didn’t screw over Longoria by delaying his service time for a year – instead, they got him to sign what is widely considered to be the most club-friendly contract in baseball today, if not of all time. If Longoria had been a free agent after the 2014 season, he’d be in line for $20 million a year or more. Instead, the Rays can keep him for $11 million in 2014 and $11.5 million in 2015. Oh, and sending Longoria back to Triple-A briefly in 2008 didn’t hurt the Rays in the development of their young team – they went from 66-96 in 2007 to 97-65 and the World Series.

Which brings us back to Wil Myers. Myers, unlike Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas, is not represented by Scott Boras, which is a sign that he should be amenable to at least listening to a long-term deal. He got $2 million out of the draft, which is big money to you and me, but compared to the $4 million Moustakas got and the $6 million Hosmer got, it’s not exactly money he can retire on – so he might be amenable to trading long-term upside for the security of a guaranteed payout.

So yes, this is exactly what I’m advocating: between now and spring training, Dayton Moore needs to open negotiations with Wil Myers and his agents on a long-term contract, one that will potentially (if all options are exercised) keep Myers under club control for nine years. Assuming Myers went back to Triple-A for long enough to delay free agency by a year, it would only buy out two years of free agency, which should be acceptable for a young player in exchange for being set for life.

I think I’ve argued for the Royals to offer a long-term contract to every good young hitter they’ve developed since John Hart and the Cleveland Indians pioneered the concept back in the early 1990s. Unless my memory is slipping, though, the Royals didn’t pull it off even once until Dayton Moore was hired. (The closest they came was Mike Sweeney, who was close enough to free agency that they paid close to market value, and the contract turned into an albatross.) For all the mistakes Moore has made, his aggressiveness in this regard has been an enormous boon to the organization.

Starting with Joakim Soria, then getting Zack Greinke signed just before he went all Cy Young on us, buying out two years of free agency on Billy Butler and Alex Gordon, and culminating with the perfectly-timed Salvador Perez and Alcides Escobar deals, Moore has done a fantastic job of keeping his best players in the fold at below-market prices. Obviously, the earlier you start the better – Greinke, Gordon, and Butler gave a modest discount on their services, while Perez’s and Escobar’s contracts are borderline theft. Perez, in fact, might succeed Longoria as the player with the most team-friendly contract in the game. (Grant Brisbee made that very argument earlier this week.)

Precisely because of Moore’s track record in this regard, I think the biggest impediment to this kind of contract – ownership signing off on it – is a hurdle that can be overcome. “Mr. Glass, you remember when I came to you and asked if you’d guarantee $7 million to our young catcher no one had heard off? Now he’s the second coming of Johnny Bench, and between now and 2019 we’ll pay him less than Joe Mauer makes this year alone. Our young shortstop who plays Gold Glove defense, has 30 steals, and is flirting with .300? He’s ours through 2017 for the same price. So I hope you’ll trust my judgment when I tell you I think we should guarantee this Wil Myers kid eight figures…”

How much will it take to get Myers signed? The Longoria contract sort of ruined it for top prospects – it’s pretty universally agreed that he gave the Rays too much of a discount. That wouldn’t affect someone like Perez, who wasn’t an elite prospect coming up, but for a can’t-miss guy like Myers that matters. Longoria got $17/6 guaranteed, $44/9 upside. The Royals won’t get a deal that good, and there’s inflation on top of that. So…$26/6 guaranteed, $56/9 upside? Myers wouldn’t be arbitration-eligible for the first three years of the contract, so he’d make no more than about $2 million for those three years anyway. That means he’s being guaranteed $8 million a year for his first three arbitration years, and $10 million a year in options for his last arbitration year and two free agency years. (Probably divvied up as $8M/$11M/$11M.)

That’s a huge chunk of change, enough for Wil Myers to retire on even if he suffers a career-ending injury the next day (unless he spends money like Vince Young). But it’s absolutely something the Royals can afford. If Myers is the biggest prospect bust of all time, they’re out $26 million – so what? They wasted more than that on Jose Guillen. But even if he turns into just a solid-average player, a Hunter Pence or something, that contract represents only a mild overpay. And if he’s a perennial All-Star right fielder, well, the Royals have an All-Star for no more than $11 million all the way through 2021. (2021!)

I don’t think it’s likely that this will happen; no player has ever signed a long-term deal while still in the minors. (Although Longoria was almost still in the minors when he signed his; he was only called up because of an injury.) But Moore has the track record to make me think it’s possible. I'm sure he'd like to get one of the Hosmer/Moustakas/Myers triumvirate signed long-term, and the other two guys ain’t interested. You’d like to think he has earned the confidence of ownership at this point. And as he learned from Salvador Perez, while there’s risk in putting your trust in a player so soon, there’s also immense reward. If you truly believe that Wil Myers can be an above-average regular in the majors – not even a star, just above average – then there’s no better time to get him signed to a contract than before he’s cashed his first big-league paycheck.

So get it done, Dayton. Give us all another spring surprise, get Myers signed in March, and then you don’t have to adhere to some artificial timetable as to when he gets called up – he’ll make the team the moment he deserves to, and not a moment later.

I was at the Futures Game when Wil Myers was introduced, and 40,000 fans gave him a standing ovation. I can’t wait to see what kind of reception he’ll get in his first major-league at-bat at Kauffman Stadium, if the fans know he’s theirs well into the next decade.

Jeremy and Luke.

It’s a cliché at this point, but whether the Royals have a shot at contending in 2013 ultimately comes down to whether they can put together a starting rotation that even approaches mediocrity. Even with an adequate rotation, they could be in for another losing season if their young lineup does a collective Hosmer, or if the bullpen decides to remind us that even the best collections of relievers are ephemeral. But if the rotation once again has an ERA above 5 and ranks 12th in the AL, discussion of the offense and the bullpen will be academic.

From the ashes of one of the most embarrassing trades the Royals have ever made, Dayton Moore may have found a solution for the rotation. A month ago Moore had traded the All-Star Game MVP and NL batting leader for Jonathan Sanchez. Today, he’s traded a disgraced PED user for Jeremy Guthrie. I’m not saying that Moore looks a lot smarter today, but Jeremy Irons is all set to play him in the movie.

Since joining the Royals, Guthrie has a 3.70 ERA in nine starts; after allowing 14 runs in his first three starts, he’s allowed just 12 in his last six. He had a stretch of 22 consecutive scoreless innings, punctuated by a start in which – upon review – he did not give up a hit until there were two out in the eighth inning. I believe that’s the deepest the Royals have taken a no-hitter since Bret Saberhagen threw their last one in 1991.

And six weeks after the Rockies were so desperate to get rid of him that they traded him for Jonathan Sanchez, Jeremy Guthrie is the ace of the Royals’ staff. He’s also a free agent at the end of the season, and the Royals have a difficult decision to make. Guthrie has said publicly that not only would he like to re-sign with the Royals, but that he’s willing to talk about a contract before the season is over. Dayton Moore said yesterday that the Royals will “probably” wait until the season ends before talking contract.

Some caution is warranted here, because it’s so hard to pin down Guthrie’s value. It’s not just that he didn’t look nearly this good six weeks ago. It’s that he didn’t look nearly this good six months ago, coming off a season in which he led the AL in losses, with a 4.33 ERA, and more hits (213) than innings pitched (208). Guthrie also allowed 26 homers, with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of barely 2-to-1 (130 to 61). I wrote about him last winter as a possible acquisition target for the Royals, but 1) I wrote about a lot of guys and 2) I wasn’t that high on him. I had him ranked 10th on my list of trade targets, behind guys like Mike Pelfrey and Charlie Morton.

One of the things that made me nervous about Guthrie is that, quite frankly, his peripheral numbers were never as good as his ERA – he was sort of the anti-Hochevar in that regard. In the five years that Guthrie pitched for the Orioles, his BABIP was never higher than .287, and was as low as .255. Your typical BABIP should be around .300; Guthrie was exceeding that year after year. That might be sustainable if you’re an extreme flyball pitcher (see Chen, Bruce), but Guthrie isn’t quite that extreme.

This year, with the Rockies, Guthrie’s BABIP was .323, which is pretty typical for that ballpark. Since joining the Royals, it’s back down to .281.  His career BABIP is .279. Maybe he really does have the ability to prevent hits on balls in play, but if he does, it seems sort of strange that Jeremy Guthrie is better in that regard than Roger Clemens (.286) or Greg Maddux (.286) or Randy Johnson (.295) or even Pedro Martinez (.282).

But if he doesn’t have the ability, he’s done a remarkably consistent job of faking it for six years now, his Colorado experience notwithstanding.

It’s not even his Colorado experience so much as his Coors Field experience. Even with the Rockies, with whom he had a 6.35 ERA, Guthrie pitched fine away from Denver. Here are his numbers this year:

Coors Field: 42 IP, 67 H, 14 HR, 9.50 ERA

On the Road as a Rockie: 49 IP, 55 H, 7 HR, 3.67 ERA

As a Royal: 56 IP, 53 H, 6 HR, 3.70 ERA

Guthrie made seven starts at Coors Field this year. He allowed at least four runs in all of them, at least five runs in six of them, and at least six runs in five of them. With Coors Field playing as it did in the pre-humidor days, Guthrie’s inability to get anyone out there can hardly be held against him.

So I wanted to take a closer look at Guthrie’s tenure with the Orioles. He wasn’t an elite starter with them; in 983 innings he had a 4.12 ERA, which was 6% better than league average during his time there. But there’s a giant caveat there: he pitched for the Orioles. In the AL East. On the one AL East team that wasn’t a scary juggernaut team for almost his entire time there, or in the case of the Blue Jays, a team that might have contended in any other division in baseball.

Guthrie averaged 31 starts and 197 innings a season, with an above-average ERA, against what I’m guessing was a higher caliber of competition than any other pitcher in the world faced in that timeframe. He threw 441 of his 983 innings (45%) against the Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays, and Rays. How much better would he have been had he pitched in a different environment? More to the point, how much better might he be if he stays with the Royals, facing the AL East titans barely one-third as often?

I tallied up Guthrie’s record from 2007 to 2011, and divided it between his performance against the AL East, and his performance against everyone else. The numbers:

AL East: 441 IP, 463 H, 140 BB, 286 K, 65 HR, 4.25 ERA

All others: 543 IP, 508 H, 141 BB, 316 K, 68 HR, 4.01 ERA

Honestly, the difference in ERA is a little less than I expected. The penalty Guthrie paid for pitching against AL East opponents was somewhere around 25 points of ERA – not huge, but not insubstantial either. Now, let’s take him out of Baltimore and put him in Kansas City. Assume for a moment that four of the five AL East teams continued to play at the same high quality that they did from 2007-2011 (a debatable assumption). The Royals average between 7 and 8 games a season against each AL East team, so they’d average 29-30 games, or roughly 18% of their season, against the same competition that Guthrie averaged 45% of his innings against.

So move 27% of Guthrie’s innings from the “AL East” row to the “All others” row, and you’d cut his ERA by…maybe 7 points. That’s hardly worth mentioning.

But there’s another factor to consider. Camden Yards is a modest hitters’ park, and is particularly favorable to home runs, which is problematic for Guthrie, a flyball pitcher. Let’s take a look at his home/road splits from 2007 to 2011:

Home: 494 IP, 516 H, 120 BB, 312 K, 71 HR, 4.25 ERA

Away: 490 IP, 455 H, 161 BB, 290 K, 62 HR, 3.99 ERA

The disadvantage that Guthrie had from pitching at home was roughly the same as the disadvantage he had pitching against AL East teams. But actually it’s worse than that, because typically pitchers are better at home – that’s why there’s a home-field advantage. Over the last three years, AL pitchers have had an ERA 36 points better at home than on the road.

So depending on how you look at it, Guthrie’s ERA was between 25 and 60 points higher at home than it would be for a typical pitcher. Some of that might simply be luck – he had a better strikeout-to-walk ratio at home than on the road, although he gave up more home runs as well. Let’s take the low end of that range, say 28 points, and cut it in half because he pitched half of his innings at home. That works out to about a 14-point drop in ERA if Guthrie had pitched for the Royals, assuming Kauffman Stadium had no effect on his performance. If anything, Kauffman would probably help Guthrie, but let’s be conservative here. (Guthrie has a 3.63 ERA at Kauffman in his career, although he had only pitched 22 innings at the K before this year.)

Add together both factors – the AL East phenomenon and the ballpark effect – and Guthrie’s 4.12 ERA with the Orioles would drop around 21 points – to about 3.91 – with the Royals. Then factor in that the AL ERA from 2007 to 2011 was 21 points higher (4.30) than it is this year (4.09), and you can chop another 21 points off his ERA, to 3.70.

His ERA since joining the Royals this year? 3.70. Funny how that works out.

This is a really long way of saying that Guthrie’s performance since joining the Royals is probably for real, and that three-month purgatory in Denver never happened, like that season of “Dallas” or the Neifi Perez trade. (Never. Happened.) There’s always the chance that Guthrie shows natural decline; he turns 34 right after Opening Day next year. But at least so far, there’s no degradation in his stuff. His fastball velocity ranged between 92.5 and 93.3 mph from 2007 to 2011; it’s averaged 92.8 mph this year, and 93.0 since joining the Royals.

So I’m on board with an extension, at least within reason. Given his age, it seems reasonable that the Royals shouldn’t be expected to commit longer than two years. I’ve been saying two years, $15 million on Twitter for a while now; Sam Mellinger has made his own suggestion of two years, $18 million with an option. That seems a little high to me; I don’t think Guthrie would have gotten 2/$18M if he had been a free agent last winter, and I don’t think you can argue that he’s increased his stock this season. Maybe his time in Colorado never happened, but it’s still on his stat sheet.

But somewhere in that range seems reasonable. The Royals can absolutely afford to pay it, and they can absolutely afford to pay Guthrie and still spend even more money to get a better, younger starting pitcher in free agency.

But if they’re looking for change in between the sofa cushions – or even if they’re not – I have an easy way for them to save money: let Luke Hochevar go. It’s time to cut bait.

Remember that fantastic stat last season, that Kyle Davies had the highest ERA in major league history for anyone with 120 starts? Well, Luke Hochevar now has 123 starts in his career, so here’s that list again:

1. Kyle Davies, 5.59

2. Casey Fossum, 5.45

3. Jimmy Haynes, 5.37

4. Kevin Ritz, 5.35

5. Luke Hochevar, 5.30

6. Scott Elarton, 5.29

7. Jose Lima, 5.26

(I couldn’t resist running the list seven deep. Four of those seven pitchers have toiled for the Royals within the last seven years.)

Here’s the thing – with the exception of Davies, all of those other guys pitched in the 1990s or early 2000s, when league ERAs were much higher. If we look at ERA+ - ERA adjusted for league context and ballpark – here’s a list of the worst pitches with 120 or more starts:

1. Phil Ortega, 75 ERA+, 141 GS

2. Wade Blasingame, 77 ERA+, 128 GS

3. Kyle Davies, 77 ERA+, 144 GS

4. Pete Broberg, 78 ERA+, 134 GS

5. Steve Arlin, 78 ERA+, 123 GS

6. Luke Hochevar, 80 ERA+, 123 GS

7. Elmer Myers, 80 ERA+, 127 GS

What’s important to take from this list is that while every pitcher on that list made it to 120 starts, NONE of them made to 150. There’s a natural limit to how long a pitcher can pitch this poorly and still con teams into giving him more opportunities. Hochevar is approaching the end of his rope.

I’ll give him credit – Hochevar sets up his marks with skill that Robert Redford and Paul Newman would appreciate. He outwardly manifests all the signs of a mid-rotation starter – acceptable strikeout rate, good command, groundball tendencies. That’s why the Royals keep sending him out there even with an ERA above 5. And he’ll put it together for weeks, even months at a time. Last year he had a 3.52 ERA in 12 starts after the All-Star Break – then started this season by allowing 28 runs in 28 innings in his first six starts.

But from May 12th through the end of August, Hochevar put together arguably his best extended stretch of pitching – in 20 starts, he allowed a 4.02 ERA in 125 innings. Sure, there were some stinkers in that stretch – in six of those 20 starts, he allowed at least five runs – but if you chose your selective endpoints carefully, you could actually depict him in a favorable light. His seasonal ERA was down to 4.93; with a really, really good September he might have even been able to set a new career-low in ERA, breaking last season’s mark of, um, 4.68.

And then on Saturday he went out and laid another turd, giving up 8 runs in 1.2 innings to the worst team in the AL, punctuated by a grand slam to Joe Mauer when Hochevar decided to throw a 1-2 pitch right down the middle.

That’s the 18th time since 2008 that Hochevar has allowed at least 7 runs in an outing. That leads the major leagues:

18: Luke Hochevar

17: A. J. Burnett

17: Paul Maholm

16: Livan Hernandez

16: Roberto Hernandez

(Hochevar, it should be pointed out, has made only 122 starts since 2008, an average of fewer than 25 starts per year. Burnett, by comparison, has made 157.)

His ERA on the season is now 5.34. He’d need to throw 22 consecutive scoreless innings to lower his ERA down to match last season’s mark of 4.68. That won’t happen, which means that Hochevar will now have made 15+ starts in five different seasons, and has never had an ERA lower than 4.68.

IN THE HISTORY OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL, NO PITCHER HAS MADE 15 STARTS IN AT LEAST FIVE SEASONS WITHOUT HAVING AT LEAST ONE SEASON WITH AN ERA LOWER THAN 4.68. I mean, even Kyle Davies had a 4.06 ERA one year.

And I’m sorry, but I’m done with him. I don’t think there’s ever been a Royals player – maybe any player – as exasperating for me to analyze as Hochevar, because he should be better than this. The stat “xFIP” is one of the most accurate measurements of what a pitcher’s ERA should be, given his walks, strikeouts, and groundball/flyball tendencies. Since reaching the majors in 2008, here’s a comparison of Hochevar’s ERA and xFIP:

2008: 5.51 ERA, 4.64 xFIP

2009: 6.55 ERA, 4.28 xFIP (!)

2010: 4.81 ERA, 4.09 xFIP

2011: 4.68 ERA, 4.05 xFIP

2012: 5.34 ERA, 4.34 xFIP

Hochevar has a substantially better career xFIP (4.28) than Jeremy Guthrie (4.65) does. His xFIP is better than that of Jair Jurrjens (4.32) and Bronson Arroyo (4.44). It’s a tick worse than Gavin Floyd’s (4.18). That’s the pitcher he’s supposed to be – not an ace, but a solid #3 starter who gives you 190 innings a year. And if was just that pitcher, he’d be an enormous asset to a franchise that desperately needs exactly that.

But he’s not. He’s one of the worst starters in the majors this year (fourth-worst ERA of any qualifying starter), for the same reason that he’s been one of the worst starters in the majors for the last five years: he can’t pitch from the stretch.

I’ve written about this multiple times in the past, and nothing has changed. In 2012, here are Hochevar’s splits:

No one on base: .255/.330/.444

Men on base: .297/.356/.476

Runners in scoring position: .309/.366/.530

You know what else hasn’t changed? The Royals haven’t acknowledged that this is Hochevar’s fundamental problem. We’ve seen every explanation under the sun – tipping pitches, not mixing in his pitches, not pitching inside, using too many pitches – and yet not once have I seen the Royals so much as mention that Hochevar is MUCH MUCH more effective when there’s no one on base. (If they have mentioned it, please point it out to me, and I’ll be happy to apologize.)

Enough. Hochevar is making $3.51 million this year. If the Royals go to arbitration with him, he will almost certainly end up with a salary of around $5 million for 2013. Playing time matters, and Hochevar’s ability to take the mound every five days will insure him a healthy raise. That’s $5 million that could go to someone far more deserving. Take that money and add another $6 million – what the Royals are paying Joakim Soria this year – and you could get a real pitcher this winter, someone like Anibal Sanchez or, yes, Edwin Jackson.

Given that the Royals won’t even acknowledge the problem, I have no faith that they will acknowledge that there isn’t a solution, and let Hochevar go. (When I tweeted after his last start that “the Royals can’t bring Hochevar back. They just can’t,” a baseball insider responded to me with three words: “Want to bet?”) I expect that they’ll do what they did with Kyle Davies last season, when they gave Davies the highest salary of his career because they thought that he was this close to turning the corner.

Because, you know, that worked so well the last time around.

Money Comes In. Excuses Go Out.

I wish I had a great story for why I haven’t written in over two weeks, and I could make one up, but that would take some time and I’ve been gone for too long already. I was going to try to catch up with a bit of everything, but I sort of got going on topic #1, and figured I’d let this stand on its own.

Earlier today, it was announced that ESPN had signed a new eight-year rights contract with Major League Baseball. The contract gives ESPN the same things they already had – the rights to broadcast Sunday Night Baseball, games on Mondays and Wednesdays and occasional special days – but it gives MLB a lot more of what they were already getting. ESPN will be paying MLB $700 million a year, twice what they paid ($350 million a year) in the current contract, which expires at the end of next season. Do the math, and that’s nearly $12 million per team in extra cash per year.

And that’s just for ESPN’s current contract, which doesn’t even include any playoff games (though I believe the new contract includes one of the Coin Flip Games between the two wild-card teams). The contracts for Fox and TBS are also up for negotiation, and NBC Sports is desperate to make a splash to add some actual game content to the fledgling network. Add it up, and there’s good reason to think that in 2014, every team in baseball will be earning $30 million a year above and beyond what they’re already making – just from their national TV contract. This is margin-free cash – same product, same expenses, vastly increased revenue.

Which is to say, if anyone claims that the Royals can’t afford a payroll of at least $80 million going forward, you have my permission to clock them in the nose. Sports revenue is rocketing upwards as advertisers realize how precious DVR-proof programming is, and even though the Royals are locked into their local TV contract for years to come (great planning, guys!), they’re going to be raking in the cash in the next 18 months.

I have largely stayed on the sidelines in the whole Is-David-Glass-The-Antichrist? debate that has festered over the last few years, and has metastasized to the point where a grassroots organization of fans spent thousands of dollars on an ad in the Kansas City Star asking Glass to sell the team (and are now raising money to run a banner ad over Arrowhead Stadium at the Chiefs’ home opener). I’ve stayed out of this debate because, whatever sins the Glass family committed early in their tenure, they found religion when Dayton Moore was hired.

If they’ve limited Moore’s ability to spend money on amateur talent, I don’t know about it. If they’ve meddled significantly in baseball decision-making, I’m not aware of it. They haven’t gone all Mike Illitch in free agency, but they authorized big contracts to Jose Guillen and Gil Meche, and it’s not their fault that Moore elected to use their money on Jose Guillen and Gil Meche. (More precisely, it’s not their fault that Moore presided over the decision to throw Meche’s arm to the wolves.)

But over the past year, I’ve grown increasingly uneasy over where the Royals’ payroll is going (or not going). I don’t blame the Glasses for cutting the payroll to around $36 million last year; for one thing, it was only that low because Meche decided to walk away from around $12 million. Last season was the beginning of a flowering youth movement, and when half the guys on the active roster are making minimum wage, it’s understandable that you might have a payroll that’s one-fifth that of the New York Yankees. But ever since Moore made comments last summer hinting that the Royals might be limited to a payroll no higher than $65 million – less than what they paid to a team going nowhere in 2009 and 2010 – I’ve waited for evidence that Moore merely misspoke, and that the payroll will be allowed to grow to accommodate the needs of a developing contender.

Frankly, I’m being charitable by saying the Royals can afford an $80 million payroll. If they could afford a payroll between $70 and $75 million in 2009 and 2010 without losing money – and if they had lost money, trust me, we’d have heard about it – their breakeven number by 2014 has to be at least $90 million, and probably around $100 million. Remember, not only are the Royals’ share of national revenues going up by somewhere around $30 million, but their player development costs have dropped by almost $10 million. That’s not their fault – that’s a provision of the new CBA, which limited the Royals to around $9 million in amateur spending this year ($6.1 million in the draft, $2.9 million in international signings). Last year, the Royals spent close to $19 million - $14 million on four players alone (Bubba Starling, Bryan Brickhouse, Elier Hernandez, and Adalberto Mondesi).

So let’s see – revenues are going up by $30 million, and amateur player acquisition costs have dropped by almost $10 million. That’s $40 million in additional money to spend on free agents even if the Royals don’t sell one extra ticket. If the Royals start winning, attendance is sure to pick up. The Royals drew 2.48 million fans in 1989 – they drew 1.72 million fans last year. The Royals might be the only team in baseball that hasn’t set an attendance record in the last two decades – Americans generally have more disposable income and spare time today than they did 20 years ago, so if the Royals could average 30,000 fans a game in 1989 (for a team that won 92 games but was only on the fringes of the pennant race) they should draw at least that many fans if they put together a consistent winner in the next few years.

So $80 million, $90 million, even $100 million – these are CONSERVATIVE estimates of what the Glass family can afford to spend on the Royals’ payroll. That is, of course, assuming that the Glass family is willing to make winning a higher priority than profit-taking. No one’s asking them to lose money on the Royals. No one’s begrudging them the $30 million-plus they made on the Royals with a bottom-of-the-barrel payroll last season. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that, just this once, they satisfy themselves with a hugely profitable year, as opposed to an obscenely profitable year, and spend most (not even all!) of their new-found windfall on the team’s roster.

Keep in mind, salaries around the game are escalating along with revenues. It’s not a coincidence that the Dodgers were willing to take on a pair of bad contracts in Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett just for the privilege of also paying over $20 million a year to Adrian Gonzalez. (The Dodgers have a $181 million payroll – FOR NEXT SEASON. And that’s for only 17 players, several of whom won’t be on the roster. They’re almost certain to get to $200 million.) As my colleague Jonah Keri wrote, the Gonzalez trade is a terrible one from the Dodgers’ perspective – UNLESS they’ve already decided that payroll doesn’t matter. Major League Baseball is swimming in cash, and every team – I mean EVERY SINGLE TEAM – is in the black. EVERY SINGLE TEAM can afford to spend more money on player salaries, and they’re going to prove it over the next several off-seasons.

But if salaries just keep pace with revenues, at least in the short term, the Royals should fare well. That’s because most of their roster is cost-controlled for the next few years, either because they’re already under contract or because they’re not arbitration-eligible. Look at the lineup: Salvador Perez, Alcides Escobar, Billy Butler, and Alex Gordon all have their salaries determined through at least 2015. Johnny Giavotella and Wil Myers won’t be arbitration eligible until 2016. That leaves Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Moustakas, all of whom will be first-time arbitration eligible in either 2014 or 2015. They’ll get raises, but none of them are seeing more than $5 million a year any time soon.

So yes, the Royals’ current payroll obligations will slowly rise – but not at nearly the rate that their revenues will. Other teams that are less flush with young talent and more beholden to the free agent market may be forced to raise their payrolls dramatically to keep pace. But the Royals, with so much of their roster cost-controlled, can use the money saved there to bid aggressively on a few key pieces to the puzzle.

I’ve avoided criticism of the Glass family since I started this website, because I have never felt it was deserved. But if they don’t spend money – significant money – this off-season, the gloves come off. They don’t have to jump the payroll into the nine-figure range in one off-season; there are only so many free agents worth spending money on in the first place. But the argument that the Royals can’t afford to sign quality starting pitchers on the open market has officially expired. If the Glass family continues to use the old arguments, my support for them in the owner’s box will expire as well.