Chaos.

Here are the American League standings on the morning of August 25th, after the Royals had lost seven games in a row, including five games at home against the White Sox and Marlins:

TEAM          W   L    GB

DETROIT      76  53   ---

TAMPA BAY    74  53   ---

TEXAS        75  54   ---

BOSTON       76  55   ---

OAKLAND      72  56   ---

CLEVELAND    70  59   2.5

BALTIMORE    69  59   3.0

NEW YORK     68  61   4.5

KANSAS CITY  64  64   8.0

The Royals had the ninth-best record out of 15 AL teams. They were as close (eight games) to the 13th-place Toronto Blue Jays as they were to a playoff spot, as represented by the A’s, who at the time held onto the second wild card.

I don’t have the ability to search ESPN’s playoff odds day-by-day, but Baseball Prospectus’ playoff odds are now available at MLB.com, and you can see how each team’s odds have gone up or down all season. On the morning of August 25th, the Royals’ playoff odds dropped to 0%. I assume they’re just rounding down, which means their actual odds were less than 0.5%.

Here are the standings right now:

TEAM          W   L    GB

BOSTON       89  59   ---

OAKLAND      85  61   ---

DETROIT      84  62   ---

TEXAS        81  64   ---

TAMPA BAY    79  66   ---

NEW YORK     79  68   1.0

CLEVELAND    78  68   1.5

BALTIMORE    77  69   2.5

KANSAS CITY  77  69   2.5

Baseball Prospectus’ odds for the Royals are now at 4.2% – and they were at 5.6% before the Rays – thanks for nothing, Wil Myers – won last night.

ESPN has the Royals’ odds at 12.8% (now down to 11.8% after the Indians took advantage of their schedule with another win against the White Sox this afternoon). If memory serves, those odds were around 3% when the Royals bottomed out three weeks ago.

So while the precise probability that the Royals are playoff-bound may differ between different models, they all agree that their odds have soared – somewhere between four-fold and ten-fold – in three weeks. They’ve roughly tripled just in the last week, since James Shields became the first starter in recorded history to give up 14 hits and not get out of the fourth inning.

This sudden wave of playoff excitement has come on awfully fast, is what I’m saying. And as much credit as the Royals rightfully deserve for it, at least as much credit has to go to Tampa Bay, without whose collapse none of this is possible.

Prior to the Rays’ win yesterday, the Royals had made up 8.5 games on the Rays in 18 days. That is an extraordinary pace. Consider that two years ago, when the Rays were themselves the beneficiary of a historic collapse by the Red Sox in September, they made up 8 games in 21 days to tie the standings. Meanwhile, the Cardinals made up 8.5 games in 22 days to do the same on Atlanta. (Of course, both Tampa Bay and St. Louis tacked on another game in another day, when both teams won game 162 while the Sox and Braves lost.)

The problem, of course, was that the Royals were 10.5 games behind Tampa Bay when this comeback started. The other problem was that there were no less than six teams between the Royals and Rays at the time – and while the Rays have dropped behind Texas, Boston, and Oakland, that still leaves three teams between the Royals and Rays. The Royals finally caught the Orioles yesterday, which means that they’ve gone from the ninth-best record in the league to…tied for eighth.

The Royals have closed what was a dispiriting gap between them and the other contenders. But all they’ve done, to this point, is put themselves in the mix of a wild five-teams-for-one-spot finish.

It’s actually somewhat more exciting than that, because the Rangers’ recent swoon puts them 4.5 games ahead of the Royals, and unlike the Rays, Texas still has games against the Royals – three in Kansas City next weekend. Sweep those games and the Royals would be 1.5 games behind the Rangers. So it’s basically six teams for two spots.

At this point, the greatest obstacle for the Royals isn’t the distance, it’s the traffic. (Apologies to whoever I stole that line from.) Two-and-a-half games to make up is doable if you’re only chasing one team, because you have two paths to victory – play really well, or play just okay while they play terribly. In 2011, the Rays were 17-10 in September, and just 6-4 in their last 10 games. The Cardinals were a little better at 18-8 and 7-3, but they went just 4-3 in the season’s final week. But each team was only chasing one team, and when that team collapsed they were in.

The Rays may continue to play terribly, but if they do, they very quickly won’t be the team the Royals are chasing. SOME team, whether it’s the Indians, the Rays, or the Yankees, will play well over the last 16 games of the season – and the Royals need to be at least one game better than the best of them just to force a tie. Realistically, the Royals need to go at least 12-4 if they’re going to play any more games after September 30th.

But I think a lot of fans would have taken that scenario at the start of the year – that a 12-4 finishing kick would lead to extra baseball, even if it just meant a wild card game or even a tiebreaker game just to get into the wild card game. Hell, I probably would have taken that.

I didn’t think the Royals would be in this position with 16 games left, and it’s fair to ask myself if I missed something in my analysis. But here’s the thing – the Royals are exactly where I expected them to be. They’re doing it differently than I thought – less offense and more run prevention – but before the season I made the formal prediction that they’d win 86 games, and right now they’re on pace to win 85.4 games.

So I don’t think I’ve misjudged the Royals. I might have misjudged the wild card race, though. My assumption was that, based on the quality of the other teams in the AL, that it would take at least 90 wins to make the playoffs – and that was before you account for the fact that the Astros changed leagues. Adding the Astros ought to make the playoff standards even higher, for two reasons:

1) When you add more teams but keep the number of playoff spots the same, the standards to be a playoff team go up, in the same way that it’s a lot harder to finish in the top 10 of your graduating high school class when there are 306 kids in your class instead of 17.

2) The Astros are such a bad team that they single-handedly improve the winning percentage of the other 14 teams in the league. The Astros are on pace to finish 55-107; accounting for the 18 intraleague games, that means that the average AL team would pick up 1.62 additional wins from playing the Astros. (Obviously the exact number depends on how many times you played them – AL West teams would pick up more wins, AL Central and East teams less.)

So I figured it would take 92 wins to make the playoffs. If that’s the case, the Royals would need to go 15-1 to get there. I remember Rocktober 2007 well enough to say that’s not impossible, but it’s not something worth believing in either.

And here’s the thing: three weeks ago, it looked like it would take 92 wins. The last playoff spot at the time was held by the A’s, who were on pace for 91.1 wins. Factor in the chance that someone could have caught the A’s from behind, and 92 wins seemed like a fair bet.

Except now, the Rays are clinging to that final wild card spot, and they’re on pace for 88.3 wins. Given the sheer number of teams right behind them, chances are someone will get a little hot down the stretch – but there just aren’t enough games left for that number to go up much higher.

My former colleague Clay Davenport, who was there when we founded Baseball Prospectus back in 1996, and was (I believe) the first person to ever use Monte Carlo simulations to project postseason odds, continues to do so at his own website. Clay adds an interesting wrinkle, which is that he also posts the average number of wins by whatever team wins each division as well as both wild card spots. This gives you an idea of what number to shoot for.

According to Clay, whatever team wins the second AL wild card averages around 88.9 wins. The first AL wild card averages 90.8 wins. Round those up to 89 and 91. 12-4 gets the Royals to 89 wins. That’s a difficult road, but it’s not impassable, or impossible. Hell, 14-2 might get the Royals to host the wild card game.

Three wins doesn’t sound like much, but this time of year, it’s the difference between difficult and impossible. The Royals have caught a break in that the standards to make the playoffs in the AL have suddenly lowered. They’re going to need a few more breaks to take advantage of the first one. This journey is still probably coming to an end sooner rather than later. But let’s enjoy every moment of it as long as we can.

#YOSTED

“If the Royals ever get into a playoff race with Ned Yost as their manager, he’s going to cost them games in September with his tactical decisions.” – Joe Sheehan, to me, many, many times over the past few years.

So let’s set the stage, if you don’t mind.

The Royals recovered from the worst loss of the season Friday night to take the last two games against Detroit. As valuable as these wins were, the fact that they came against the first-place team in the division was of no extra benefit. Barring a miracle, the Royals aren’t catching the Tigers. They’re going after the wild card.

Tonight, though, the Royals opened a three-game series in Cleveland, a series which does have an added importance. The Indians are one of four teams the Royals have to overcome in the next three weeks, ranging from 1 to 3.5 games ahead of them in the standings. The Indians have, by far, the easiest schedule of the five: aside from six games against the Royals, they play six against the White Sox, four against the Astros, and four against the Twins. All 14 of their non-Royal games come against the three worst teams in the league.

But: they play the Royals six times. Of the remaining games on their schedule, the games against Cleveland are clearly the most important, and they would be even if the Royals still had games against the Yankees or Orioles or Rays, which they don’t. The Royals have to win five of these six games, or even sweep them. Even going 4-2 would just pull the Royals even in the loss column, and while the Indians have 14 cupcake games, six of the Royals’ other 13 games come against Detroit and Texas.

This series is huge. Tonight’s game was huge.

It didn’t start well at all. Asdrubal Cabrera homered in the second inning; in the third, Jose Ramirez singled for his first major league hit, then scored from first base on Drew Stubbs’ groundout after Eric Hosmer threw wildly trying to nail him at third base. Meanwhile, Jarrod Dyson was thrown out at the plate trying to score from third on Alex Gordon’s grounder to first base.

Yan Gomes homered in the fifth to give Cleveland a 3-0 lead, and after Hosmer singled in a run in the sixth, Carlos Santana led off the bottom of the seventh with a drive that nicked the very edge of the fair pole in right field – it was originally called a foul ball, but reversed on video replay.

But down 4-1 with six outs to go, the Royals fought back. Alcides Escobar doubled to lead off the eighth, and Gordon homered to bring the Royals within a run. Wade Davis gave up an infield single to Ramirez in the bottom of the inning – but then picked him off and finished the inning without further incident.

Down a run to start the ninth inning against the team they absolutely have to beat, against the closer (Chris Perez) everyone loves to hate, on the 9th of September, the Royals got to work. Salvador Perez singled. Mike Moustakas walked. The Royals had men on first-and-second and no one out.

“Is this the most tension you’ve ever felt as a Royals fan? This moment?” – Joe Sheehan, in a text to me, at this moment.

I’m too young to remember anything before 1982, and I was living overseas in 1984 and 1985, so with a nod to 1989, it’s basically between 2003 and this year. Everyone forgets that the Royals were tied for first place on the morning of August 30th in 2003, and just a game out on September 4th, but on September 9th that year they were, as they were today, 3.5 games out. While they would stay exactly 3.5 games out every day from September 11th to September 17th, they never did get any closer than that.

And that entire time, they never played the two teams they would ultimately finish behind, the White Sox and Twins. By the time they played the Sox, on September 19th, both teams were all but finished: the Royals were 4.5 games back, the White Sox 3.5 games back, with 10 games left.

Tonight’s game was against a direct contender with time still on the clock, a game the Royals didn’t play at all that September. The most tension I probably felt that season came in August; the Royals entered their final series in Minnesota on August 22nd a half-game behind the Twins, and one-game behind the Sox. They won the first two games of that series, 3-2 and 4-3, before getting blown out in the finale.

But in both of those wins, the Royals had the lead after five innings and held on to win. In the first game, the Twins didn’t threaten in the ninth until they reached base on a strikeout/wild pitch with two outs, followed by another strikeout to end it. In the second game, Mike Ryan led off the bottom of the ninth with a walk against Mike MacDougal, who struck out Shannon Stewart and then got Luis Rivas to hit into a game-ending double play.

I guess that moment could have qualified as the most stressful moment of the last 28 years. There were still 34 games left in the season after that game. There are 18 games left after tonight. Even acknowledging the steeper odds the Royals face this year compared to in 2003, September is the month for drama, not August.

So to answer Joe’s question: yes. Tonight, after Salvador Perez and Mike Moustakas reached base to put the tying and winning runs on base in the ninth inning against a team the Royals absolutely have to beat in order to make the playoffs, was probably the tensest moment of my entire life as a Royals fan.

(I’m 38 years old, by the way. I have lived and died with this team on a day-by-day basis for at least 24 years. And tonight was…yeah. I know.)

Okay, so now that the stage is set, let’s look at what happened.

Ned Yost, recognizing the stakes, decided to use every weapon at his disposal in the ninth inning. Chris Getz ran for Perez even before Moustakas walked; when Moustakas walked, he was pulled for Pedro Ciriaco.

I had no problem with this; if anything, in the moment it reminded me a little of the most famous ninth inning in Royals history, when Dick Howser used FOUR pinch-hitters and TWO pinch-runners, and one of those pinch-hitters drove in one of those pinch-runners to tie the game ahead of Jim Sundberg’s winning run. (See, kids, there was a time when baseball teams chose not to carry eight relievers, and instead had something they called a “bench”, where you could actually keep position players that could enter a game and provide value with their bat, their glove, or their legs.)

Ned Yost still wants his eight relievers, but fortunately it’s September, which means you can carry a bunch of extra players - I believe the Royals have 34 on their active roster right now. I’ve got no problem with Getz and Ciriaco pinch-running.

And then Yost calls on David Lough to pinch-hit for Lorenzo Cain.

Okay, an interesting decision, but it’s defensible, I suppose. Lough gives you the platoon advantage against Perez, and you still have several other bats to pinch-hit for Escobar with, and…wait, what? He pinch-hits for Cain with Lough, and then orders Lough to bunt?

Honestly, I don’t have a huge issue with bunting in the abstract in this situation. Giving up an out to move a runner from first to second is almost always a bad move (unless it’s the pitcher batting) – but giving up an out to move a runner from to second and a runner from second to third is, in the right circumstances, break even or even better. Prior to the bunt, with men on first and second and none out in the ninth, down a run, the Royals’ chances of winning the game were around 43%. A successful bunt that moved the runners to second and third with one out would actually increase the Royals’ chances of winning the game to about 44%. (Here’s a game from earlier this year against the Mets where the Royals bunted in the exact same situation – you can see their win probabilities listed in the play-by-play section.)

Basically, the bunt in that situation is a break-even play, depending on who’s at the plate, the pitcher, etc. I would argue that facing a less-than-elite closer in Perez, with a batter that has the platoon advantage and is tough to double-up (Lough has only grounded into three double plays all year), with good speed on the bases, that you’re probably better off swinging away in that situation. And I certainly don’t think it’s worth wasting one of your better pinch-hitters just to order him to put a bunt down.

But okay, it’s not the worst managerial decision I’ve ever seen. No, that came next.

So with one out and the tying run 90 feet away, the winning run 180 feet away, Jarrod Dyson was due to bat. Dyson’s not the first guy I’d want up in that situation, but he’s far from the last. He’s a lifetime .267/.334/.370 hitter against right-handed pitchers. He’s not a great contact hitter, but he’s not a swing-and-miss guy either – in 647 career plate appearances, essentially one full season of play, he’s struck out 123 times. And obviously, his speed can create all kinds of problems on any ball hit on the ground.

Only Dyson doesn’t come to the plate. In his stead, Yost sends up…Carlos Pena.

Now, there are probably situations in which I’d rather have Pena at the plate than Dyson. Two outs, tying run’s at the plate, you need a homer to tie…yeah, I could see the case for Pena in that situation.

This was not that situation.

The Royals had just bunted – they had just given up an out – in order to put two runners in scoring position. You know what “scoring position” means, right? It means IN POSITION TO SCORE ON A SINGLE. We don’t say a runner on first base is in scoring position, even though he could score on a double, and obviously the batter is in scoring position if he hits a home run. The point of moving runners into scoring position is so that THEY CAN SCORE ON A SINGLE.

Jarrod Dyson hits singles. Lots of them, actually. He’s a career .252 hitter, and 74% of his hits are singles. He has singled in 17% of his career plate appearances.

Carlos Pena does not hit a lot of singles. Walks and homers, yes. Singles, no. As Matthew Pouliot pointed out in his takedown of Ned Yost this evening, Pena hits singles in 10.3% of his career plate appearances – fewer than every other active player with 1000 plate appearances other than Adam Dunn. (And by the way, it’s not a good sign when a national baseball writer writes a column within minutes of the final out to point out what a terrible manager you are.)

Pena has had a long and occasionally brilliant career despite not hitting singles, because he hits home runs (27 or more six times) and draws walks (87 or more six times). But here’s the things – when you hit a home run or you draw a walk, IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCES WHETHER THE RUNNERS ARE ON FIRST AND SECOND, OR SECOND AND THIRD. A homer drives them all in; a walk loads the bases either way.

If Yost was planning to pinch-hit for Dyson with Pena, HE SHOULD NEVER HAVE BUNTED THE RUNNERS OVER. And if he wanted to bunt the runners over, HE SHOULD NEVER HAVE PINCH-HIT WITH CARLOS PENA. These two individual decisions, questionable but not catastrophic on their own, are like nitro and glycerin put together.

Yost gave up an out to give his team a chance to take the lead with a single – and then sent a batter to the plate with an unusual, nearly historic, inability to hit singles.

The other advantage of the bunt was that it moved the tying run to third base, allowing you to potentially tie the game without the benefit of a base hit. You’re not supposed to play for the tie on the road, but with the Royals’ bullpen, what the hell.

In which case, the last thing you want is a strikeout. Dyson has struck out in 19% of his career plate appearances. Pena has struck out in 27% of his career plate appearances.

So to reiterate: with the tying run on third base (don’t strike out!), and the go-ahead run on second base (hit a single!), Yost swapped out his scheduled hitter for a pinch-hitter who 1) strikes out 40% more often and 2) hits singles 40% less often.

AND THAT’S NOT THE WORST PART. No, the worst part is that CARLOS PENA IS DONE. He’s finished. He can’t hit anymore. For God’s sake, he was released BY THE HOUSTON ASTROS on July 31st, once they realized that no team was willing to trade for him. At the time he was released, he was hitting .209/.324/.350. Last year, playing every day for the Rays, he hit .197/.330/.354 in a feverish attempt to prove that occasionally the Rays don’t know what they’re doing. He did hit .225/.357/.462 for the Cubs in 2011, but hit .196/.325/.407 the year before that.

Since the start of the 2010 season, Pena is hitting .207/.335/.398. Since the start of the 2012 season, he is hitting .201/.327/.352. I’m not saying his secondary skills don’t give him a tiny bit of value. But I am saying that as terrible a choice as he would be to bat in this situation if he were at his peak, he’s an even more terrible choice today. For God’s sake, Pena hasn’t hit .230 in a season since 2008.

The Royals had plenty of better options than Pena in the franchise’s most leveraged plate appearance in 28 years. They could have let Dyson bat. They could have had Getz running on contact, making it more likely he’d score on a ground ball. That risked getting Getz thrown out at the plate – like Dyson had been earlier – but that would have put men on first-and-third, and with Dyson on first, they could have stolen second base, knowing there’s a good chance that the Indians wouldn’t have thrown through (even though Dyson had been thrown out trying to steal earlier) because it would have given Ciriaco a chance to steal home with two outs.

They could have put on a safety squeeze play, knowing again that the worst-case scenario was that they could have stolen second base with Dyson and have men on second-and-third again.

Or, if Yost really didn’t trust Dyson in that situation, he could have used a different hitter. Like, I don’t know, DAVID LOUGH. Lough has a higher career batting average than Dyson – admittedly a small sample size – and also has a lower strikeout rate. Lough’s big weakness is that he doesn’t walk, but again, with men on second and third walks don’t matter. Power doesn’t matter. Singles matter, and Lough hits singles on 18.7% of his career plate appearances.

Instead, Yost used Lough to put a bunt down because he didn’t trust Cain in that situation, or anyone else on the bench, including Johnny Giavotella or Jamey Carroll. If you don’t trust Jamey Carroll to put a bunt down, just cut him already. Or perhaps Ciriaco could put down a bunt, in which case you pinch-run for Moustakas with Carroll or Giavotella or Justin Maxwell instead.

This would require Ned Yost to think more than one move ahead, though.

Anyway, this is the Royals, where no bad deed goes unpunished. Pena saw six pitches and didn’t swing at any of them, including a 3-2 slider that sent him back to the dugout along with the Royals’ postseason hopes, more or less.

The Royals still had one out left, and Yost sent George Kottaras to the plate to bat for Escobar. If those are my two choices, against a right-handed pitcher, I of course want Kottaras at the plate – but again, in this specific situation (second and third, two out), Kottaras’ skill set is utterly misapplied. The Greek-Canadian God Of Walks has singled in 9.2% of his career plate appearances – an even lower rate than Pena’s. He’s hit eight singles all season long. He takes, and he rakes.

He took ball four this time, after fouling off four two-strike pitches, a magnificent at-bat that, because of the way he was used, didn’t do a whole lot to increase the Royals’ chances of winning the game. Because what it did do – load the bases – could have been accomplished WITHOUT BUNTING. If Yost had pinch-hit for Cain with Kottaras, a walk there would have loaded the bases with none out. If the bases were loaded with none out, Lough could have pinch-hit and driven in two with a single, or hell, Pena could have pinch-hit and had a chance to drive in the tying run with a walk.

Instead, with two runners on base and no one out, in the biggest inning his franchise had played in a generation, Yost seemed to go out of his way to put his players in a position to fail. He used the most players least suited for the situation that he deliberately gave up an out to create. With all that, the Royals still had Alex Gordon at the plate with the bases loaded and two outs. Gordon flied out. If there was only one out, the runner probably scores from third. And who knows, there might have been only one out if Yost hadn't given one away for no purpose. But he did.

There’s no way to sugarcoat this: Ned Yost made the most consequentially bad managerial decision I have ever seen from a Royals manager. Maybe the stakes weren’t quite as high, but this was Lin Elliott-caliber choking. This was Grady Little-caliber managerial malfeasance.

And I have to think the Royals’ front office understands this. As much as I rag on them, I have no doubt that they are very bright guys who understand baseball very well – and they must understand that Ned Yost just cost their team a ballgame in a pennant race with tactical decisions that can not possibly be defended. And they must understand that there is a small but real chance - I would say around 2% - that the outcome of this game will decide the outcome of the wild card race, with the Indians winning the wild card and the Royals finishing one or two games behind them.

Hell, I think Ned Yost himself understands he screwed up, although he may never admit it, much as Grady Little still refuses to acknowledge that maybe he should have pulled Pedro Martinez after seven innings. Like an NFL coach screwing up the clock management in a two-minute drill, in the heat of the moment, without enough time to coolly think through the implications of all his decisions, Yost made a decision that he can’t justify in the morning. (Fortunately, the Chiefs’ don’t have a coach who would ever screw up the clock.)

A few columns ago I wrote that Ned Yost’s influence on the decision to fire Kevin Seitzer was itself a fireable offense. I tried to sugarcoat that a little just yesterday, writing that as long as the two could co-exist, I’d be willing to accept Yost’s continued employment as manager.

Well, I can’t anymore. I think Ned Yost has done a decent job of what he was hired to do: develop these young players, get them acclimated to the major leagues, nurture them through the inevitable bumps along the way. It hasn’t always been pretty; Escobar looks like Angel Berroa Jr. at the plate, and the jury is still out on whether Mike Moustakas will ever reach his potential. But then Salvador Perez was never supposed to be this good.

If this is Yost’s final season as the Royals manager, I will remember him more fondly than most of his predecessors. Trey Hillman was overmatched. Buddy Bell was luckless and hapless. Tony Pena abandoned his team in the middle of the night. Tony Muser just wasn’t very good. Bob Boone wasn’t very good even though he apparently invented the game of baseball. Yost will have accomplished something during his time as the Royals’ manager, something I’m not sure I can say about any other manager since Hal McRae.

But at this point, his continued employment is a detriment to the organization. Tonight, with his team in a pennant race, in the most crucial inning his franchise has played since the year Back to the Future was released, Ned Yost cost his team the game with his indefensible decisions. It wasn’t the first time. And I fear it won’t be the last.

A P(Esky) Problem.

I have a column in today’s Kansas City Star, on what the Royals need to do in 2014 to take the next step and reach the playoffs. If you haven’t already, feel free to read it here.

Not much more to say, except that the Royals really need to figure out what to do with Alcides Escobar. Last year, he hit .293; this year, he’s hitting .233. Last year, he had 42 extra-base hits; this year, with three weeks left in the season he has 24 extra-base hits. Last year, he walked 27 times; this year, he’s walked 18 times.

Last year, he was an above-average hitter for a shortstop; his overall line of .293/.331/.390 compared to the AL average of .255/.306/.368. This year, his .233/.259/.296 is the worst of any regular in baseball – he has the lowest OPS of any qualifying player.

Last year, he was worth 3.5 WAR. This year, he’s at 0.0 – he’s the definition of a replacement player. As I write this, the Royals are 3.5 games behind the Rays for the second wild card. So…you do the math.

And here’s the thing: Alcides Escobar is 26 years old. He should be improving as a hitter. At the very least, he should be peaking. He shouldn’t be collapsing, shouldn’t be having his worst offensive season ever, even worse than his rookie year in Milwaukee, which dropped his stock so far after being a top-15 prospect in all of baseball the year before that the Royals were able to get him as just a part of the Zack Greinke trade.

This conundrum – a player at a key defensive position who was one of the team’s most valuable players just a year ago, in his mid-20s, who has nonetheless been useless this year – makes what to do at the shortstop position probably the most difficult decision of the winter. I mean, second base is a disaster, but it’s an easy decision to make – you need to acquire someone who can play the position. (And, I guess, you need to not fall into the trap of letting Emilio Bonifacio’s solid six weeks trick you into giving him the everyday job. Bonifacio would make for an excellent utility player. Letting him have the second base job without competition is risking disaster if you get the 2012 player – or even the 2013 player before he arrived in Kansas City.)

The Royals have to replace one, and maybe two, guys in the rotation – and I’m sure they will aggressively do so. I am hopeful they will find an upgrade in right field, but a David Lough/Justin Maxwell platoon wouldn’t be a disaster if they ended up focusing their efforts elsewhere.

But at shortstop…hope is not a strategy. Well, it is a strategy, one employed by many, many Royals teams over the years, but it’s not a good strategy. And if the Royals’ solution at shortstop is to just bring Escobar back and hope that he’s better, that’s a hope-based strategy.

The obvious, cheap, and straightforward solution would be to re-hire Kevin Seitzer as the team’s hitting coach. I have already written about the impact he’s made on the team, and I’ve already made the case that his part in forcing Seitzer out of the job is enough to justify letting Yost go. If Yost were to consent to letting Seitzer reclaim his job and let him do his job without interference, my main objection to Yost’s continued employment would be eliminated. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, and if I had to choose between Yost as manager and Seitzer as hitting coach, I know who I’d choose.

But the odds of Seitzer getting his old job back, with or without Yost, are none and slim. In which case, what do you do?

Complicating things slightly – but only slightly – is that Escobar has a long-term contract that guarantees him $3 million in 2014 and 2015. While that looks like dead money at this point, I would argue that Escobar is an example of precisely why long-term deals for pre-arbitration-eligible players is so good. Even with Escobar’s complete collapse this year, the Royals are on the hook for what, $6 million over the next two years? They gave Noel Arguelles more guaranteed money as an amateur signing. And it’s not like Escobar has no value – he’s going to get another chance to start every day next season, whether it’s for the Royals or someone else. If the Royals have the opportunity to acquire an upgrade at the position, the money they owe Escobar should in no way discourage them from doing so.

But if you want to replace him, it’s not like there’s a huge inventory of quality shortstops available on the trade market. In my column I suggested J.J. Hardy, who’s not without his flaws (he hit .238/.282/.389 last year, although he’s bounced back to .261/.306/.447 this year), and who may be hard to pry from the Orioles given that they fancy themselves contenders, but is probably the best fit for a short-term fix at the position. Hardy will only make $7 million next year, and the Orioles can simply accelerate the timetable to moving Manny Machado back to his natural position. Hardy is also an excellent defender – probably better than Escobar right now – which is an important consideration given how important defense has been to this team.

If you can’t get Hardy, then who? Troy Tulowitzki’s too good, Elvis Andrus is too expensive (and Jurickson Profar is too top-prospecty). You want to gamble on Starlin Castro? The Cubs might be willing to talk, but with his long-term deal, he’s going to cost you a ton of prospects, and I was worried about Castro before he suffered a collapse of his own this year. Plus, he’s not a good defender – he’ll probably have to move off shortstop eventually – and I don’t think I’d mess with that if I’m the Royals.

Jimmy Rollins might be done, and knowing Ruben Amaro, he’ll probably want Hosmer and Moustakas in a trade anyway. The Nationals ain’t moving Ian Desmond. The Indians are getting tired of Asdrubal Cabrera, but aren’t trading him in the division.

Jhonny Peralta will be available, but again, the defensive downgrade would be pretty huge.

So the best remaining options would probably be:

- throw a ton of money at Stephen Drew, and hope he doesn’t break down;

- sign Yunel Escobar to a one-year deal and hope he doesn’t piss off everyone in the clubhouse before his time is up;

- buy low on Ruben Tejada and hope he rebounds;

- trade for Erick Aybar in a package deal with Howie Kendrick.

They all make varying degrees of sense, but they all carry substantial amounts of risk.

I wish I had an obvious answer for you, but I don’t. The only thing that’s obvious is that they have to get more production at shortstop next year. Hope isn’t a strategy. I’m just not certain where a better one is hiding.

Five For Friday: 8/30/13.

Heads up, Kansas City: I’m coming to town next week. For the first time…well…ever, I’m going to be attending baseball games at Kauffman Stadium in September. Maybe it’s a long shot, but a long shot is better than no shot, which is what we’ve been stuck with for a decade. Meaningful baseball in Kansas City after Labor Day is something to be savored, and I want to be there. Hopefully many of you will want to be there too. I’m still working out the details with 810 WHB, but hopefully we’ll be able to set up some sort of meet-and-greet where I can get the chance to say hi to many of you. Stay tuned to my Twitter feed for more details.

And if the Royals are still in the race two weeks later, I might come back to town from September 20-22, the next-to-last weekend of the season. And as luck should have it, if the Royals somehow find themselves mathematically alive with three games left, the final series of the season is here in Chicago. If the Royals are playing for something, I hope some of you can make the trek up and we’ll turn U.S. Cellular Field a lovely shade of blue.

On to your questions. The general theme of your questions is that, while you’re all pleased that the Royals are relevant again, you’re already turning towards next year, and with quite a bit of concern. I share your sentiments.

AJ Exner (@AJExner): What is your ideal 5-man rotation come 2014?

Well, this is really the big question for 2014, isn’t it? The Royals seem to regard 2013 as a stepping stone – let’s not get into Dayton Moore’s whole “ahead of schedule” bunk, as I really don’t want to add hypertension to my list of problems – and seem to think that if they win 85 games this year, this will position them perfectly to win 90-95 games next year, much as Terry Ryan’s Minnesota Twins went 85-77 in 2001, and then 94-67 in 2002, winning the first of six division titles in nine years.

I imagine that thinking is predicated on the notion that a young offense will continue to improve, and that’s a reasonable expectation, given that last I checked the Royals still had the third-youngest offense in baseball, older than only the Astros and (surprisingly, perhaps) the Braves.

The problem is that the offense will probably have to improve A LOT if the Royals are going to take a step forward next year, because the pitching staff will almost certainly be worse. The Royals have the best ERA in the AL. That is amazing, and impressive, and almost certain not to be repeated next year.

Here are the starters that are under contract for next year, in order of the starts they’ve made for the Royals this year:

James Shields (28)

Jeremy Guthrie (26)

Wade Davis (24)

Luis Mendoza (15)

Danny Duffy (3)

Will Smith (1)

Santana and Bruce Chen are free agents, and they’ve combined for 261 innings and a 3.08 ERA this year. That’s going to be tough to replace. On the other hand, Davis has a 5.67 ERA, Mendoza has a 5.06 ERA, and the Royals should be able to improve on their performance quite easily. (Remember, they have one of the best defenses in baseball.)

If you just focus on their performance as starters, they’ve combined for 74 starts and a 4.14 ERA. The ERA shouldn’t be hard to match, but the sheer quantity starts will be difficult to replace. The Royals will have Duffy all season, although it’s a question whether they’ll allow him to make 32 starts or whether they’ll get spooked by his elbow surgery and hold his innings back past the limits of common sense. (Also known as “pulling a Strasburg”.) I’d like to see what Will Smith could do in the rotation, given the impressive strides he’s made as a pitcher the last two years – but he hasn’t started a game at any level since June 2nd, and precisely because he’s been so successful as a reliever, the Royals might not want to give up their security blanket.

This isn’t on the Royals alone; as Joe Sheehan recently wrote in his Newsletter, the whole industry has been too quick to turn young starters into relievers, and not long relievers: short relievers who throw an inning at a time, which makes the process of refashioning them back into starters fraught with peril. (Think Alexi Ogando, Neftali Feliz, Joba Chamberlain, or hell, Wade Davis.) I’d like to see the Royals give Smith a chance to win a rotation spot next spring, but if they don’t do it then, you might as well abandon the idea altogether – at that point Smith would have no more chance of becoming a starter again than Aaron Crow does.

So the Royals basically have three starters they can use for next year – and Guthrie, at least, is walking a tightrope every time out. His ERA this year is 4.19, but his xFIP is 4.62 and his FIP is 4.87. I’m not saying he can’t continue to outpitch his peripherals – he’s always had a lower-than-average BABIP, and with his high-contact style of pitching, he’s benefited from the outstanding defense as much as anyone. I will continue to #EmbraceTheLuck. But I will also acknowledge that he’s going to be 35 next year, and if he loses even a little bit of effectiveness, he’s going to be a lot less effective, if that make sense.

Regardless, the Royals need at least two starters for next year. I would not be surprised if one of them is Bruce Chen. Barring a terrible September, Chen has probably positioned himself for a similar contract to the one he’s finishing, maybe for a little more money – 2 years and $12 million, say. He’s not as good a pitcher as what he’s shown this year, but then he’s not as bad as he was last year, when he had a 5.07 ERA despite a career-high strikeout-to-walk ratio of better than 3-to-1.

It won’t be a terrible move if they do resign him; he’ll be 37, but maybe he really is the second coming of Jamie Moyer. But I still wouldn’t expect him to replicate this year’s performance. And that leaves one more rotation spot open – and keep in mind that we’re not accounting for injuries, ineffectiveness, etc; you really need to go into spring training with at least seven viable starters.

I would not be surprised if the Royals try to open next season with Davis and/or Mendoza in the rotation again. I would be surprised if that doesn’t end badly.

I think the Royals would love to have Kyle Zimmer or Yordano Ventura win a rotation spot in the spring. Realistically, I don’t think either one will be ready until mid-season, and I see them more as insurance policies for when someone in the rotation inevitably needs to be replaced, sort of like what Duffy was this year. (Except for the whole “let’s wait to replace the guy with the 5.67 ERA until the end of August” thing.).

So that leaves them doing the same thing they did last winter: find a veteran starting pitcher that’s either a free agent or a bounce-back candidate they can get cheaply in trade. The Royals did both last year; Guthrie’s been about what they expected, while Santana is perhaps the greatest trade of Moore’s career. The good news is that they probably only have to do it once; the bad news is that it’s hard to believe they’ll get anyone as good as Santana has been.

The Royals’ rotation ranks 6th in the AL with a 3.93 ERA, and 4th in the AL with 6.11 innings per start. Given the resources on hand, they’ll be hard-pressed to match those rankings next year.

Yooper_IA (@Yooper_IA): If the Royals market their bullpen for other pieces, what can they get since many believe bullpens can be built internally?

Here’s the other, maybe bigger, reason why I think the pitching staff as a whole won’t be as good next season: the Royals have the best bullpen in the AL, and given the inherent variability in relievers from one year to the next, it’s very difficult to maintain that kind of quality in back-to-back season. (Note: Atlanta excepted.)

Did I say the Royals have the best bullpen in the AL this year? I’m sorry – I mean they have the best bullpen in the AL in the last 23 years. The bullpen has a combined 2.57 ERA, a mark not matched by an AL team since the 1990 A’s had a 2.35 ERA. No other team in the AL has a bullpen ERA under 3.00. The Royals could have the best bullpen ERA again next year and STILL decline significantly. Regression’s going to be a bitch.

Given that the bullpen’s going to decline anyway, you might as well trade some of those guys before they regress for help elsewhere. The problem, as you state, is that except for the elite, most relievers don’t bring in a ton in trade. I think one of the bullpen guys could be a nice second or third piece to get a trade for a position player done, and I would be fine with that.

But if you’re going to trade a reliever by himself for impact, it pretty much has to be Greg Holland. Closers can still fetch talent, and sometimes they can even bring in a major league-ready position player. Mark Melancon for Jed Lowrie-plus. Andrew Bailey for Josh Reddick-plus. Matt Capps for Wilson Ramos.

Yes, it would hurt to lose Holland, who is having pitch-for-pitch the best season by a Royals reliever ever. His 1.38 ERA is just a point behind Jeff Montgomery’s 1.37 ERA as the lowest in Royals history for someone with 40+ innings. His .179 batting average against is 5th all-time, and one of the four guys ahead of him is himself two years ago. And his 41.5% strikeout rate is off-the-charts ahead of anyone else in team history; the next-best rate is 31.5%.

But here’s the thing: even the best closers rarely maintain their effectiveness for very long. As Buster Olney has pointed out, 27 of the 30 closers in baseball didn’t have the job with their current team two years ago. Matt Klaassen mentioned John Axford as a point of comparison; while Holland’s been a little better than Axford was in 2010-11, it’s close, and Axford has been a shell of his former greatness the last two years. (And like Holland, Axford sort of came out of nowhere to be an elite reliever for two years.)

Furthermore, it’s not like the Royals don’t have options to close. One of the three guys with a better batting average against than Holland is…Luke Hochevar, against whom hitters are batting .172 this year. I’m not advocating that the Royals make Hochevar their closer next year…no, wait, I AM advocating that, and no, I can’t believe it either. All due respect to the Royals for salvaging an excellent reliever out of the game’s worst starter.

And behind Hochevar, they have Collins, and Herrera looks like he’s fixed, and Louis Coleman has a 0.39 ERA and is in Wilmington for the week because they can’t find a spot for him, and Aaron Crow has been on the roster all year and they’ve only found 43 innings for him to pitch. If Will Smith is a reliever now, well, Will Smith looks like a hell of a reliever. And let’s not forget that Wade Davis was fantastic in the bullpen last year, and like Hochevar, maybe that’s just the place for him.

So trade Holland. Maybe there’s a team out there with a need for a closer and a second baseman to spare. The bullpen is going to be worse either way; at least this way you might be able to compensate by making a big offensive upgrade.

Tate Christgen (@TateCinKC): What are the chances they deal a top five prospect for a 2B or RF? If so, what are the chance Dayton Moore gets strangled?

Well, first off, they don’t have a top five prospect. I don’t mean that as an insult – I mean that in the sense that my specific objections to the Wil Myers trade involved a particular set of circumstances that can’t be replicated this year.

Hard as it may be to believe, I don’t have an objection to trading prospects for established talent. I do have an objection to trading prospects when they are top five overall prospects, when they are hitting prospects (and much less likely to get hurt or mysteriously lose their stuff), and when they are major league-ready themselves. Myers was as close to a sure thing as there is in the minors and he was ready to help the Royals in 2013. The Royals simply have no one who fits that description for 2014. Few teams do.

Which is to say, not only would I be fine if the Royals trade one of their top prospects for a real solution at second base or right field (or, I suppose, in the rotation), I would actively encourage it. Look at their top prospects, in no particular order:

- Raul Mondesi just turned 18. He’s two years from the majors. He might be a monster when he arrives – I could see him being a Top 20 or 30 prospect overall – but if you get an appropriate return, you can help your team significantly in 2014 and 2015 for a player unlikely to help you until 2016.

- Yordano Ventura is a pitcher. Who stands 5’11”. And has command issues.

- Kyle Zimmer is a pitcher. Who had to end his season a little early because of minor arm issues. Again.

- Bubba Starling is already 21, and just in A-ball, and while I think he’s quietly re-established himself as a prospect again (more on that in a future column), there’s a ton of risk here.

- Jorge Bonifacio might be the guy I’d be most reluctant to trade, in that I think he’s 90% of the prospect Myers was – he just turned 20 in June, he’s in Double-A already, and despite breaking a bone in his hand earlier this year he’s recovered and is hitting .301/.371/.441 since he was promoted to Northwest Arkansas. But even he’s not a can’t-miss.

And look, if you traded for Shields to be all-in for 2013 and 2014, then you’re all-in for 2014. If 2013 really is a stepping stone year, then anything short of a playoff berth next year will be a failure. I suggested something along the lines of Ventura for Howie Kendrick at the trade deadline, and I’d certainly be willing to trade him for an above-average regular at a position of need.

I don’t have detailed trade proposals for you at the moment. But the general principle is fine. The Royals, as constituted right now, probably aren’t good enough to win in 2014. But they’re close enough to it that trading future talent for present talent this winter isn’t just warranted, it’s practically a necessity.

Eric Loes (@LoesEric): Thoughts on possibly bringing Beltran back to play right field. Make sense? Possible?

Make sense? Hell yeah. Beltran will be 37 next year, but he’s hitting .310/.343/.526 for the Cardinals this year; his 138 OPS+ is actually higher than he had at any point when he was with the Royals. He has about as broad a skill set as you can possibly have; he’s one of just eight players in history with 300 homers and 300 steals. Interestingly, he actually has the lowest walk rate of his career. Generally, hitters walk more late in their careers, as they learn to compensate for the loss of bat speed by swinging less. The fact that Beltran is not swinging less – but still hitting for a high average – makes me think that he still has that adjustment in his bag if he needs it. If he’ll sign another deal similar to the one he’s on now (2 years, $26 million), I would jump on it.

Here’s the thing: the argument so many made in favor of trading for Shields was that by making the Royals more respectable this season, it would make them a more favored destination for free agents in the future. Beltran – a still-excellent player who has made a ton of money in the game and probably wants to win more than anything else at this point – is a perfect test case for this theory. If Beltran signs with the Royals, and does so in part because of their record in 2013, I will grant you that this would be a fringe benefit of the Shields trade that I have not really accounted for. Mind you, if Beltran signs with the Royals because they finish 85-77, he might have signed with them if they finished 82-80 with the Rookie of the Year in right field. But it’s at least something you can point to.

I’m skeptical that will happen, because there are a lot of teams that look like they can win in 2014, and Beltran will probably sign with the team that offers him the most money. Free agents usually do.

Matt Erickson (@MattEricksonKS): What in the world is up with Alex Gordon’s L/R splits this year?

I’m already approaching 3000 words for a Five For Friday, so let’s end with a quickie. Here’s Gordon’s splits this year:

vs. LHP: .316/.370/.532

vs. RHP: .246/.311/.374

Gordon has 21 extra-base hits vs. lefties in 171 at-bats, and 24 extra-base hits vs. righties in 345 at-bats. It’s a huge difference.

And it’s almost certainly just random variation. For his career, Gordon has hit .251/.321/.413 vs. LHP, .278/.356/.448 vs. RHP. If you just want to consider his career since he rebuilt his swing, he was better against right-handed pitching in both 2011 and 2012. In fact, last year his splits were almost a mirror image of this year’s:

vs. LHP: .248/.311/.357

vs. RHP: .320/.398/.510

The difference is that you face roughly twice as many right-handed pitchers as left-handed pitchers, so his overall numbers are down significantly.

This happens sometimes. Not often, though. In fact, in Retrosheet history (i.e. since 1946 or so, with isolated games going back to 1916), the difference between Gordon’s OPS vs. LHP (.903) and his overall OPS (.757) is the fifth-highest of all time for a left-handed batter (min: 150 PA vs. LHP):

Player          Year  OPS vs. LHP  OPS overall  Diff.

Garret Anderson 2000     1.010        .827      .183

Chase Utley     2010     1.003        .832      .171

Mo Vaughn       1999     1.032        .866      .166

Barry Bonds     2002     1.532       1.381      .151

Alex Gordon     2013      .903        .757      .146

(Looking at Barry Bonds’ numbers always make me laugh.) If you go by percentage difference, Gordon moves up to third overall.

The thing is, if you look at their career numbers, all four players hit RHP better than LHP. The platoon advantage is something inherent in the game, in the kinetics of the swing and in the biology of the way the eyes track a ball moving towards or away from you. (Mind you, the platoon advantage does not always apply for pitchers.)

So I don’t think it means anything, other than that Gordon is not one of those lefties who is completely helpless anytime a lefty specialist who throws 87 but can spin a breaking ball comes into the game. It may not be a coincidence that the other four guys all had long, successful career. The ability to hit left-handed pitching this well, even in a small sample size, is a pretty strong indicator that you’re a damn fine hitter.

And finally, and unfortunately, your bonus question:

Jared (@JWoodOMFS): I’d like to see a short commentary on possible US intervention in Syria and some details about Assad.

I’d really like to write a full-length column on Syria at some point. I haven’t for a variety of reasons, the first one being that at least back in 2011, I was concerned that writing about Syria might jeopardize the security of family back home, or of my parents, who were still venturing back and forth between America and Syria at the time.

That, in itself, should tell you something about the Syrian government. One of the great tragedies of the Iraq War, in my opinion, is that we as Americans are no longer as willing to acknowledge that true evil does exist in the world, and true evil can not be eliminated by diplomacy or political maneuvering. The Assad family is basically a mafia family in charge of an entire country, only with less morals. They are responsible for the fact that I’m writing to you about baseball, in English, from America: their oppression of the Syrian people is responsible for the mass emigration of a Syrian diaspora of literally millions of people over the last 40+ years, including my parents, who had no intention of permanently settling in America when they arrived for my father to perform his medical residency in 1970, and who then had no intention of ever raising their children in Syria after they returned to see what had become of the country by 1977.

Officially, over 100,000 people have been killed in the last two and a half years; unofficially, I would be stunned if the true number wasn’t double or even triple that, given the number of people who have simply disappeared. The lucky ones are dead; the unlucky ones are being tortured in a prison system that I would describe as medieval, except that they didn’t have the benefits of technology in medieval times. The world has finally awoken to the true nature of the Assad family after they used poison gas to kill about 1300 Syrian civilians, mostly women and children, and this wasn’t the first time they used chemical warfare this year. There are 2 to 3 million Syrian refugees outside the country right now. Mind you, the population of Syria before protests began was about 23 million. So multiply these numbers by 12 or 13 to scale it to America’s population, and you’ll get some idea of the degree of misery.

The rebels aren’t all perfect, which isn’t surprising when the government responded to the initial non-violent protests with wholescale murder, and when the only foreign entities willing to help were the fundamentalist Arab governments of the Gulf region, who were more than happy to provide money and weapons to people who were willing to subscribe to their extremist ideologies. But the majority of the rebels are simple, moderate, middle-class Syrians who are tired of watching their sons murdered, their daughters raped, their brothers thrown into a dungeon for six months before his barely-recognizable body is returned to their family.

I don’t know if I have the answers for you, largely because the right answer was to have done something two years ago, before the extremists gained ascendancy, before the conflict spilled into Lebanon and Iraq, before hundreds of thousands lost their lives and millions lost their homes. But no one did. One of the reasons why I am forcefully in favor of doing something is that we’ve already seen the fruits of doing nothing. We did something in Libya – not a lot, but enough, and at the right time. Libya certainly still has its issues today, but it’s a veritable paradise compared to Syria. We had two very similar situations in 2011 – two long-standing Arab dictators threatening genocide against a population that had finally had enough. We saw two very different reactions from the international community. In the country where foreign powers applied a brief but effective military response, the dictator was neutralized and killed, and the people are trying to dig themselves out of a half-century of oppression. In the country where foreign powers did nothing, one of the great international tragedies of the 21st century has unfolded.

Given that, I am at a loss to understand how people can look at Libya and Syria and conclude that the solution to the Assad family’s latest atrocity is to do nothing. But then, there’s a lot I don’t understand about politics. Which is why I’m not a politician. Thank God.

The Missing Ingredient.

For most of this season – even when the Royals were at their worst, a designation they appear intent on challenging yet again – I have tried to refrain from blaming Ned Yost too much for their problems. It’s not that I think that Yost is a great manager, or even a good one. But at least this season, I don’t think he’s been a bad one, and more importantly, I think that the problems that have bedeviled this team all season – i.e. offense – have been more the result of roster construction than of roster deployment. And I think that placing the spotlight on Yost just allows Dayton Moore to scurry away and hide in the darkness.

So I haven’t written too much about Yost. I think he’s cost the Royals some runs by letting guys like Chris Getz and Alcides Escobar bat waaaay too often at the top of the lineup. But where I think he has cost the Royals the most is if, as rumored, he is the reason why Kevin Seitzer was let go. This season is a bright, shining exhibit of how the disappointing offense of 2012 wasn’t Seitzer’s fault:

- Jeff Francoeur was a worse hitter for the Royals this year (.208/.249/.322) than last year (.235/.287/.378), and even worse after joining the Giants (.194/.206/.226). Seitzer only worked with him for two seasons, and in one of those Francoeur hit .285/.329/.476. It looked like an impressive achievement at the time; it looks like a freaking miracle today.

- Alcides Escobar hit .235/.288/.326 with the Brewers in 2010, then hit .254/.290/.343 and .293/.331/.390 in his two years with Seitzer. That first season breaks down as .203/.237/.236 through June 3rd, then .286/.323/.411 the rest of the way. Selective endpoints and all that, but if you give Seitzer two months to work with his new hitter, he basically turned Escobar from a .230 hitter to a .290 hitter with some pop.

This year, Escobar hit .295/.333/.429 through May 5th – and he’s hit .218/.241/.266 since. He’s at .236/.262/.303 overall, even worse than his one full season in Milwaukee. If you assume that there’s a lag of a month or two between the time a hitting coach works with a player and the time the results manifest themselves, Seitzer is basically the difference between Escobar being an above-average shortstop offensively and one of the worst everyday hitters in the game.

- Salvador Perez hit .331/.361/.473 and .301/.328/.471 in two seasons with Seitzer as his hitting coach. This year, he hit .318/.340/.439 through June 15th – and .213/.260/.290 since. He’s hitting .268/.301/.367. Again, a guy who hit beyond expectations under Seitzer, and doesn’t resemble the same batter at the plate this year.

- Mike Moustakas hit .263/.309/.367 and .242/.296/.412 under Seitzer – not great, but not terrible, and he was trending upwards, particularly when you consider how bad he was when he first came up (he hit .182/.237/.227 in the first 53 games of his career, then hit .379/.412/.564 in 36 games the rest of the way). This year, he’s hit .235/.292/.366. This, despite being at an age where you would expect him to improve over time.

- Alex Gordon struggled for two years after Seitzer was first hired in 2009, partly because he was injured and partly because he was in Triple-A. After the 2010 he reconfigured his swing. He hit .303/.376/.502 in 2011, and .294/.368/.455 in 2012. This year, he hit .340/.379/.502 through May 29th. Since then, he’s hit .214/.299/.346; he’s at .268/.332/.413 overall. Two years ago, he hit 45 doubles, and last year he led the league with 51 doubles. This year, with a month left to go in the season, Gordon has only 22 doubles.

- In four years under Seitzer, Billy Butler hit between .291 and .318 every year, and slugged between .461 and .510 every year. This year, he’s batting .289 and slugging .423, although he’s walking more than before, so his .383 OBP is his highest since 2010. From 2009 to 2011 he averaged 47 doubles a year; he hit only 32 in 2012, but also hit a career-high 29 homers. This year, he has just 12 homers and 24 doubles. He had at least 60 extra-base hits every year under Seitzer; with a month to go, he has just 36 this year.

- Even Eric Hosmer, who was probably the reason Seitzer got fired last year after he hit just .232/.304/.359 last year, didn’t do a damn thing under the new hitting coaches until Jack Maloof and Andre David got fired. He’s been terrific ever since, but his overall line this year of .299/.347/.453 is essentially indistinguishable from his performance as a rookie in 2011 of .293/.334/.465. (His OPS+ is 118 each year.) He was 21 then; he’s 23 now, and the same hitter overall, although we’re certainly hopeful that the hitter he is now is the hitter he’s been for the last two months.

Add it all up, and a team that finished 6th in the AL in runs scored two years ago WITH THE YOUNGEST OFFENSE IN BASEBALL is 13th in the AL this year. It’s not just that almost every hitter has hit worse – it’s that they’ve hit worse even though they’re at an age where they should be improving, in some case dramatically. Even today, Hosmer and Perez are 23 years old, Moustakas is 24, Escobar is 26. Gordon and Butler, the old men in the lineup, are 29 and 27. Not one of them – NOT ONE OF THEM – is having a better year at the plate than they had two years ago. Only one of them is having a better year at the plate than they had LAST YEAR, which is the year that got Seitzer fired.

Heck, throw Lorenzo Cain in there if you want. He only played 67 games under Seitzer, and 96 this year, but with Seitzer as hitting coach he batted .266/.315/.410, and this year he’s at .261/.324/.362.

Oh, and Chris Getz hit .255/.313/.287 in 2010, and .275/.312/.360 last year – yes, Chris Getz was almost respectable last season. This year, he’s hitting .224/.290/.281.

This is astounding. You can lay the blame at whichever hitting coaches you want this year; Moustakas and Hosmer have turned things around since George Brett and Pedro Grifol took over in late May, but that’s roughly the same time that Perez, Escobar, and Gordon all went into the tank. Both sets of hitting coaches have plenty of questions to be asked of them. Grifol earned lots of plaudits (and the full-time job) because of the turnarounds from Hosmer and Moustakas, but the Royals aren’t scoring any more runs now than they were three months ago, because in fixing two problem spots in the lineup, three more have sprouted up.

The drop in doubles is particularly astonishing. Two years ago the Royals finished second in the league with 325 doubles. Last year they dropped all the way to third, with 295 doubles. This year they are 12th, on pace for just 258, with almost exactly the same personnel. This is what people who were critical of Seitzer harped on – that he focused on hitting the ball up the middle, and gap power, which was good for two-base hits but not so much for the four-base hits that you really want.

Seitzer is gone, and so are the two-base hits. Yost evidently wanted the Royals to hit more home runs – remember the comments he made to the media at the end of last season, when Seitzer was let go. And it’s true, under Seitzer they didn’t hit a ton of homers. They were 11th in the AL in 2011, and 13th in the AL last year. Of course, they’re always at the bottom of the league in homers, largely because Kauffman Stadium (except during that 1995-2003 era when the fences were moved in) is a tough park to hit homers in.

Well, the Royals sacrificed doubles to hit more homers…and this year, they’re the first team in AL history to be 15th in home runs. (Okay, so it’s the first year there’s been 15 AL teams.) They don’t hit doubles or homers, so despite being 7th in the league in batting average, they’re dead-last in slugging average. Under Seitzer, maybe they didn’t hit the ball over the fence, but they still had a little of what Trey Hillman called slug: 5th in the AL in slugging average in 2011, 10th in 2012.

Back in May, Russell Carleton published a study at Baseball Prospectus that evaluated hitting coaches based on whether the hitters under their tutelage improved or declined. By his methodology – and it’s only one way of looking at things – Kevin Seitzer was worth about 58 runs over an average hitting coach over the course of a season. Among every hitting coach of the last 20 years who had held the job for more than two seasons, the only hitting coach worth more was Clint Hurdle – who coached for the Rockies from 1997 to 2001, before the humidor, when Coors Field was maybe the best hitters' park in world history. Carleton admits that the extreme conditions may have affected the numbers in a way he could not control for, and made Hurdle look better than he was.

So basically, Carleton came to the conclusion that Seitzer was, if not the best hitting coach of the last 20 years, certainly close. And that was before this season, when practically every hitter he coached last season has declined to varying degrees. I imagine the same study performed today would rank Seitzer even higher.

You want to know what’s wrong with the offense? The answer is astoundingly simple: Kevin Seitzer isn’t here anymore.

I’m just going to stop here. When I sat down to write this article an hour ago, I had a completely different article in mind. I planned to write about Yost’s tactical screwups, which seem to be coming more frequently as the team wilts in the August heat, culminating in last night’s terrible 9th inning, when Jarrod Dyson pinch-ran for Billy Butler even though Butler wasn’t the tying run, and Escobar was allowed to bat against a right-handed reliever with a big platoon split while George Kottaras sat on the bench. I was repeatedly warned by Joe Sheehan that in a pennant race, Yost’s tactical blunders would come back to haunt the Royals, and he was certainly proven right last night.

But what was supposed to be a brief detour into Yost’s influence on the decision to fire Kevin Seitzer turned into the destination, because the evidence is pretty overwhelming: firing Seitzer was the worst decision the Royals made all off-season – at least when it came to the 2013 season. (Insert necessary reference to The Trade here.) Keeping Seitzer around may well have been the difference between a team struggling to stay over .500, and a team that right now could be at the head of the wild-card race. If you think that’s an exaggeration, ask yourself how good the Royals would be if they had the 6th-most runs scored in the league to go with the AL’s second-best ERA. And then remind yourself that two years ago, with virtually the same lineup, the Royals were 6th in the league in runs scored. And once Perez was called up in 2011, no one in the entire lineup was more than 27 years old. 

It is almost literally unbelievable that a lineup that was above-average two years ago, with a pair of 21-year-olds (Hosmer and Perez), a 22-year-old (Moustakas), a 23-year-old (Johnny Giavotella), a 24-year-old (Escobar), a 25-year-old veteran (Billy Butler), and a 27-year-old (Alex Gordon), all of whom are still in the organization today, would be one of the worst offenses in the league this year.

I was planning to make the case that it might be time to let Ned Yost go because of his tactical deficiencies. But I’m not going to make that case. Because there’s a much simpler case to be made here: Ned Yost should be fired because he couldn’t get along with Kevin Seitzer, and because he couldn’t appreciate the fine work that Seitzer was doing.

It’s time to let Yost go.

And with all due respect to Pedro Grifol, who I’m sure can be an asset to the organization in another capacity, it’s not too late to bring Seitzer back. But they better hurry before it is.