C'mon.

The Royals, they always me keep me guessing.

I didn’t think the Royals were going to add another pitcher this late in the off-season, and if they were, I didn’t think it was going to be Bruce Chen. Ervin Santana, maybe, although 1) I thought those chances were overrated by fans who wanted their security blanket back, and 2) I didn’t think it made sense to bring him back at the price he wanted, or even at the (much-lower) price it looks like he’ll get.

But Chen? I love the guy, but what did the Royals need with another innings-eating #4 starter/swingman type? The Royals already have plenty of mediocre security in the rotation, and they have more relievers than they can possibly put on the roster. I have no idea how Chen fits on the roster.

And yet you know what? I love this deal. One guaranteed year? $4.25 guaranteed million, including his option for 2015? This is pocket change in today’s game. Chen can make an additional $1.25 million if he makes 25 starts, and the Royals could bring him back in 2015 for an extra $4.5 million, although the “mutual” part of the option renders it essentially meaningless.

I really don’t get this pitching market. I still think Phil Hughes’ three years and $24 million could be the bargain of the winter. Maybe Matt Garza’s arm is really in such bad shape that four years and $50 million is all he could get, but it’s clear that neither Santana nor Ubaldo Jimenez, both durable #3 starters at the very least, are going to get close to the five-year deals and $15 million annual salaries they were expecting to get. But then there’s Masahiro Tanaka getting $155 million from the Yankees, plus the $20 million posting fee, plus an opt-out after four years. Scott Feldman got three years and $30 million from the Astros to be a really good #4 starter.

And then there’s the Royals, once again jumping the gun on the free agent market back in November, signing Jason Vargas for four years and $32 million, and once again looking like they would have been far better off keeping their powder dry.

Because the very reasons that I love this deal for the Royals make the Vargas signing look even sillier and more unwarranted. I made this very comparison at the time, but to repeat myself:

Over the last 5 years (when Chen joined the Royals), Chen has a 4.32 ERA.

Over the last 5 years, Jason Vargas – pitching in the two best pitchers’ parks in the AL – has a 4.07 ERA.

“Wait,” you say, “Kauffman Stadium is a great place to pitch as well.” Well, not exactly. It’s a great place to not give up homers, but a pretty terrible place to not give up singles, doubles, or triples. Over the past five years, Kauffman Stadium has been essentially neutral in terms of its effect on overall run scoring, and if it leans in any direction, it’s in favor of the hitter. In 2013, for whatever reason, Kauffman Stadium increased scoring by about 5%, but from 2009-2012 the K increased scoring by less than 1% overall.

Now, Bruce Chen is a flyball pitcher, and he’s probably benefited from Kauffman’s dimensions more than most pitchers would. And it’s true: over the last five years, Chen’s ERA at home is 4.00, but his road ERA is 4.66. That’s a slightly bigger home/road disparity than most pitchers have.

Except here’s the thing: over the last five years, Vargas’ ERA at home is 3.37, and his road ERA is 4.83.

Over the last five years, Bruce Chen has a better ERA on the road than Vargas. The Royals signed one of them for 4 years and $32 million guaranteed, and the other for one year and $4.25 million guaranteed. This does not compute.

Sure, Chen’s road ERA benefits from the fact that he gets to make occasional road starts in Seattle and Anaheim, while Vargas doesn’t, but at the very least they’re essentially equal pitchers on the road. And while Chen is an extreme flyball pitcher, Vargas is pretty neutral in that regard, so Chen fits Kauffman’s blueprints much better. True, Vargas has averaged more innings (190 to 152) over the last four years than Chen, but Chen’s innings count is diminished by the fact that he worked out of the bullpen in parts of 2010 and 2013. And Vargas was the only one who was on the DL last year. Just two years ago, Chen led the American League with 34 starts.

Yes, Chen is six years older than Vargas, and for any other type of player that would make this comparison moot. But lefty finesse types, once they’ve learned to survive in the majors, tend to age very well. The aging process robs pitchers of velocity over time, but if you’ve already learned to succeed in the majors without it, you’re basically immune. Chen turns 37 in June; Jamie Moyer’s four best seasons came at ages 35, 36, 39, and 40.

If you put a gun to my head, and forced me to choose only one pitcher for 2014…you might wind up pulling the trigger before I could decide. Vargas is likely to throw more innings; Chen is likely to pitch better inning-for-inning. It’s essentially a tie.

And honestly: I’d probably wind up picking Chen, because if everything goes according to plan for the 2014 Royals, at least one and maybe two minor league starting pitchers will be ready for a rotation spot at some point in the season, and Chen has proven the ability to go back and forth between the rotation and the bullpen without difficulty. Vargas does not. So there you go: I think Chen is a better fit for the 2014 Royals than Vargas, at half the salary, and without the messy commitment for 2015, 2016, and 2017.

I know it’s gauche to complain about Vargas again when the Royals just made a nice move to re-sign Chen, much the same way it’s considered poor manners to complain about the Valentine’s Day gift your spouse got you while opening your birthday present. But I’m sorry: the contrast is just so jarring. The Royals signed two remarkably similar players, and one of them got twice the annual salary and four times the contract length of the other.

Insomuch as what’s past is prologue, and Vargas was already under contract, I still like the re-signing of Chen, particularly since he is at least tentatively slotted to start the year in the rotation. The scenario I outlined above – where Chen can move to the bullpen once Yordano Ventura or Kyle Zimmer is ready to go – seems to be the plan; it’s not a coincidence that the bonuses in Chen’s contract kick in if he makes more than 15 starts, as I’m sure in an ideal world the Royals would plan to have him in the bullpen before he gets to his 16th start. This does mean the Royals plan to start the year with a rotation of James Shields, Jason Vargas, Jeremy Guthrie, and Bruce Chen – basically, a good #2 starter and then three #4 starters. The fifth spot ought to go to Danny Duffy, and if re-signing Chen relegates Duffy to a lesser role, his return will be costly in more than just dollars.

I suspect – because I’m generally a nice guy who wants to believe the best in everyone – that the Royals want Duffy to be the #5 starter and will give him every opportunity to win the job, but feel that giving him legitimate competition for his job will spur him to work harder and excel. That’s what I suspect drove the acquisition of Danny Valencia, to spur Mike Moustakas, and Moustakas showed up to FanFest noticeably thinner than last year. (He also sported a Mohawk, but nobody’s perfect.)

That means there’s no spot in the rotation for Ventura, at least not to start the year, and that’s not the worst thing in the world. He’s made just 14 starts in Triple-A, and another month in Omaha would delay free agency by a year, and he could still work to tighten his command a little. In an ideal world, Ventura returns to Omaha, makes Triple-A hitters cry for a month or two, then gets promoted to Kansas City when a rotation spot inevitably opens.

And in a less-than-perfect world where one of the Royals’ projected five starters gets hurt in spring training, or where Duffy can’t find the strike zone, then Ventura can slide right into the rotation. The Royals have six major league-caliber starters on their roster right now, which is something a team with playoff aspiration has to have. Ideally three of them wouldn’t be innings-eating veteran finesse pitchers, but we’ll take what we can get. If the defense and bullpen are as elite as they were last year, the Royals should still be one of the best teams in the league at run prevention.

So I was completely prepared to give a thumbs-up to this move, and even compliment ownership for spending the money they saved by reworking Jeremy Guthrie’s contract. And then the other shoe dropped: to make room for Chen – on the payroll more than the roster – the Royals designated Emilio Bonifacio for assignment.

Bonifacio had agreed to a contract for $3.5 million for 2014, but it wasn’t guaranteed; by DFA’ing him now, I believe the Royals aren’t on the hook for a penny. (Update: I've had it confirmed that the Royals are still on the hook for one-sixth of Bonifacio's salary, assuming he isn't claimed on waivers - so this move saves them about $2.9 million.) So the Royals have basically replaced Bonifacio’s salary with Chen’s. And in so doing, they are sending a pretty strong signal that their payroll is tapped out at – pending the resolution of Greg Holland’s arbitration case – a little under $89 million.

And I’m sorry, but that’s not acceptable. Last year’s Opening Day payroll was roughly $81 million; it wound up a tick north of that, largely thanks to the Royals’ shrewd claim of Bonifacio on waivers in August. The Royals, as we’ve been noting for the past 18 months since the contracts were signed, are due roughly an extra $25 million annually from their national TV deals. It’s actually about $27 million a year, but I’m figuring some of that will go to expenses. The Royals – and every other MLB team – would like you to think that it’s all going to expenses. Here’s an article featuring a rare breakdown by an owner (Rockies owner Dick Monfort) of where that money is allegedly going.

Of the $27 million, Monfort claims $8 million goes to baseball’s central fund – which sounds like an expense, but of course that money belongs to MLB, and if they spend it in other ways, that’s money they would have spent regardless of the new TV deal. Monfort also plans to pay $5.5 million back to the MLB credit line to pay for a previous loan – again, that loan would have to be repaid regardless, and it’s a matter of convenience to claim that the money to repay the loan comes from the new TV deal. Monfort claims the Rockies can only add about $11 million to the payroll, but the very numbers he presents make it clear that the Rockies could increase payroll by $16.5 million and still be revenue-neutral, and that’s not counting MLB’s central fund.

The Royals haven’t raised their payroll by $16.5 million, or even $11 million. They’ve raised their payroll by about $8 million. They would have raised their payroll by about $11 million – and saved me the trouble of criticizing them – had they not just let Bonifacio go. But they did.

You could argue that Bonifacio is overpaid as a utility player, and you might be right. But I’d argue that the one thing that seems to separate the 2014 Royals from the 2013 Royals, or any other Royals squad in the last 20 years, is their depth. With the exception of St. Salvador, the Royals were perfectly positioned to weather an injury to anyone in their starting lineup; with the addition of Chen, they could weather an injury to a starting pitcher, and they’d probably have to lose three or four relievers to an outbreak of dysentery before they’d felt the pinch.

Bonifacio was the critical cog in that depth; he’s capable of playing second base every day, but he has the ability to play every non-battery position in the field. He’s not someone you want playing shortstop a lot, but he started 61 games there for the Marlins in 2011 and was at least adequate. He’s started at least 20 games at all three outfield positions and all three skill positions on the infield; he’s never played first base, but presumably because he hasn’t needed to. He has the ability to get on base, and he’s a terrific baserunner, which means on the days when he’s not in the starting lineup he’s a very good bench player.

In a best-case scenario, Bonifacio wouldn’t be in the starting lineup much, but would still have value off the bench. In a worst-case scenario, Bonifacio would be forced into the starting lineup for a month or two, and save the Royals from a big scar in their lineup.

I’ve seen the argument made that Bonifacio was not prepared to be a utility guy at this point in his career, and the Royals let him go to avoid the clubhouse discord that he might have provoked. We’ll set aside that since we’re all just speculating here, it’s possible that Bonifacio’s presence in spring training might have been a boon to his younger brother Jorge, who happens to be one of the best prospects in the system and the probable starting right fielder in 2015. We’ll also set aside the fact that worries about how an everyday player might adjust to a utility role didn’t keep the Royals from re-signing Yuniesky Betancourt two years ago.

We’ll just make the case that if the Royals really did let Bonifacio go for his own good, they sure picked a curious time to do so, cutting him from the payroll just as they were about to add Chen to it.

Frankly, if I had to choose between the two, I’d probably prefer Bonifacio. The Royals, as I’ve detailed a few times, have a roster crunch. They need to make room for Danny Valencia if they only plan to keep 13 hitters; cutting Bonifacio does that, except of course that leaves the Royals without a backup middle infielder, which is impossible. I assume Pedro Ciriaco will take Bonifacio’s spot, and the Royals still don’t have room for Valencia.

Meanwhile, Chen just makes a roster squeeze on the pitching side of things more acute. Even if Ventura opens in the minors, here are the pitchers the Royals have on their 40-man roster:

James Shields

Jeremy Guthrie

Jason Vargas

Bruce Chen

Danny Duffy

Louis Coleman

Tim Collins

Aaron Crow

Wade Davis

Kelvin Herrera

Luke Hochevar

Greg Holland

Barring a trade – any day now, guys – the Royals have seven relievers they have to carry, unless they really want to send Louis Coleman and his 0.61 ERA back to Omaha. There’s no room for Donnie Joseph, to say nothing of Chris Dwyer or Francisley Bueno, and when Chen moves to the bullpen they’ll have to make another move.

But hey, pitchers get hurt; these things have a way of sorting themselves out. The roster isn’t the issue, because this really isn’t about Bonifacio at all. Maybe the Royals don’t need him; maybe they’ll get comparable production from Ciriaco, who has a career line in the majors of .277/.307/.385 – but he has less than a season’s worth of playing time in the majors, and his career line in Triple-A, in nearly three times as much playing time, is .267/.285/.368. Or maybe none of their infielders will get hurt and they won’t need Bonifacio, although keep in mind that Omar Infante missed a month last season and has never played 150 games in a season.

But the Royals didn’t let Bonifacio go because of talent; they let him go because of money, or at least it seems that way. So my criticisms here have nothing to do with Dayton Moore and the front office, and everything to do with ownership. If the Royals surprise us and acquire another player, and the payroll closes in on $95 million, then I will withdraw my criticisms. But right now, it appears for all the world like the Royals are tapped out, precisely when the roster is close enough to being playoff-caliber that a few million judiciously-applied dollars could be the difference between breaking a 29-year playoff drought, and extending it.

Royals Today: 1/27/14.

I keep waiting for the Royals to do something noteworthy enough to justify writing a column about it, and they keep not obliging. After six weeks, I finally blinked. So let’s find some things to talk about.

- The biggest transaction the Royals have made in the last six weeks was trading David Lough for Danny Valencia. On a pure talent-for-talent basis, the Royals lost the trade. But as the Royals have now moved out of the “acquire talent” stage of franchise construction, and into the “arrange that talent into the framework of a winning team” stage, it’s a defensible move.

By making the trade, the Royals have made it clear that they don’t entirely buy into Lough’s performance in 2013, either offensively or defensively. On the whole, I agree with them. Lough hit .286 as a rookie; this is good. He walked 10 times in 335 plate appearances; this is bad. He was 27 years old; this is terrible, at least from the standpoint of whether you expect Lough to improve or even maintain his performance going forward.

Defensively, Lough was worth 15 runs above average defensively in not even a half-season in the field; this is good. Defensive numbers are notoriously unreliable, and Lough wasn’t reputed to be the second coming of Garry Maddox in the outfield; this is bad.

The last two paragraphs explain how Lough can 1) lead all AL rookies – yes, even Saint Wil – in Wins Above Replacement according to baseball-reference.com, and 2) still be worth trading for a platoon third baseman.

In the expansion era (since 1961), only eight 27-year-old rookies had as many bWAR than Lough, and one of them was Ichiro Suzuki. Here are the other seven, and you’ll laugh when you see who’s number one:

Player            Year  bWAR

Mike Aviles       2008   4.7

Lew Ford          2004   4.4

Randy Milligan    1989   3.7

Scott Podsednik   2003   3.6

Freddy Sanchez    2005   3.3

Ron Theobald      1971   2.9

David Lough       2013   2.7

Andy Stankiewicz  1992   2.7

Aviles, like Lough, came out of nowhere to have a remarkable rookie season that was elevated by 1) a very good batting average despite poor plate discipline and 2) terrific defensive numbers that were completely unexpected. (Aviles was +14 runs at shortstop as a rookie per Baseball Info Solutions.) He’s been a useful utility guy, but hasn’t had a season with even half as many bWAR since.

Ford hit .299/.381/.446 as a rookie, after hitting .329/.402/.575 in a 34-game cup of coffee the year before. In his sophomore year he hit .264/.338/.377; the following year he hit .226/.287/.312 and was out of baseball before long. Podsednik hit .314/.379/.443 for the Brewers in 2003, slumped to .244/.313/.364 in 2004 (but led the NL in steals) and was traded to the White Sox, where he hit a respectable .290/.351/.349, and then, after not hitting a homer all season, hit two in the playoffs as the White Sox won the World Series. He would be a useful player for years to come, but never had an above-average OPS+ after his rookie year.

Randy Milligan hit .268/.394/.458 for the 1989 Orioles, a big part of their turnaround from a 54-107 record the year before to within two games of the AL East title. He hit .265/.408/.492 in 1990 and was a useful player through 1993, when he hit .299/.423/.434, but age hit him with a right hook; he batted 98 times in 1994, at age 32, and never played again. Milligan was a Ken Phelps All-Star through and through, a guy who never should have had to wait until he was 27 to stick in the majors, but came up in an era when no one cared what your OBP was. He had a career .408 OBP in the minors. In 1987, at age 25, he hit .326/.438/.595 with 29 homers and 103 RBIs in Triple-A. That got him two at-bats in September and a trade to Pittsburgh; a year later the Pirates traded him to the Orioles for Pete Blohm, a graduate of Johns Hopkins and the pitching coach for the college team during the off-season when I tried out for the squad my sophomore year in 1992, which is why I went on this tangent and this paragraph is so damn long.

Freddy Sanchez is the one old rookie who really built on his success; after hitting .291/.336/.400 as a rookie, he led the NL in batting average (.344) and doubles (53) the following year, and played regularly for five more years before getting hurt in 2011 and he hasn’t played since. It’s worth noting that even as a rookie, Sanchez had tremendous contact skills – he struck out just 36 times in 492 plate appearances – which boded well for his ability to continue to hit for average.

Ron Theobold hit .276/.342/.325 as a rookie, hit .220/.342/.256 as a sophomore and never played in the majors again. Andy Stankiewicz hit .268/.338/.348 as a rookie, which so impressed the Yankees that he got 9 at-bats the following year; he never got more than 150 at-bats in a season again, hitting .216/.291/.286 after his rookie year.

Milligan and Sanchez went on to productive careers, but both players had given reason to believe in them after their rookie years – Sanchez because of his very low strikeout rate, Milligan because he had mashed in the minors. None of the other guys on this list ever had a single 2.5 bWAR season again.

So while I think Lough might be a useful fourth outfielder and may end up with 2000 at-bats in the major leagues, I think it’s unlikely the Royals will truly miss him. With Gordon, Cain, and Aoki the starters, the Royals had to move one of Lough, Jarrod Dyson, and Justin Maxwell. They had to keep Dyson for Cain insurance, and because his speed was such a weapon off the bench, and they had to keep Maxwell because he crushes lefties. Lough doesn’t really do any one thing that well, so it was hard to see a reason for him to get much playing time barring injury.

Valencia, on the other hand, does one thing well and only one thing well: hit lefties. Last year he hit .304/.335/.553 in 170 plate appearances overall, which sounds great, but breaks down to .371/.392/.639 vs. LHP, .203/.250/.422 vs. RHP. That’s par for the course for Valencia; his career numbers are .329/.367/.513 vs. LHP, .229/.269/.360 vs. RHP. He’s a third baseman but not a particularly good one, and mostly DH’ed last year, although in fairness it’s not like he was going to play over Manny Machado.

So it would appear that the Royals traded an outfielder they had no room on the roster for, in exchange for a third baseman who will platoon with Mike Moustakas and make the 2014 team a few runs better. This makes perfect sense, but it’s not that simple, because I don’t think the Royals are prepared to make Moustakas a platoon player at this point in his career.

And I’m not sure they should. As bad as Moose was in 2013, a year ago he was coming off a season where he hit .242/.296/.412 and played out of his mind at third base, and was worth 3.2 bWAR. That’s not great, but that’s something you can build on for a 24-year-old third baseman. Yes, he declined both offensively and defensively last year, but I think writing him off as an everyday player, or even a future star, is premature. According to Baseball-Reference, his list of 10 most similar players through age 24 includes Ken McMullen (1583 career games, 34 bWAR), Don Money (four-time All-Star), Howard Johnson (three times finished in top 10 of MVP vote), Gary Gaetti (2507 career games, 42 bWAR), and yes, Alex Gordon. More than half of his comps went on to have really good careers.

A guy who doesn’t show up on his comps list, but who I’ve used as a comparison, is Pedro Alvarez. Alvarez, like Moustakas, was the #2 overall pick in the draft (although Pedro was drafted out of college), reputed to have tremendous power but not a great hitter for average. Like Moose, Alvarez hit well at age 23 (.256/.326/.461), but at age 24 was even worse than Moustakas (.191/.272/.289), to the point where the Pirates had to send him back to the minors. But they didn’t give up on him, and the last two years Alvarez has hit .244/.317/.467 with 30 homers, and .233/.296/.473 with a league-leading 36 homers. He’s still a flawed player, but on the balance a pretty good one.

So I don’t think the Royals can give up on Moustakas yet. The problem is, it would be a crime to keep Valencia on the bench against lefties, but there’s nowhere else he’s going to play. You’re not benching Butler against lefties; you’re not playing Valencia over Hosmer at first base. In left field, Gordon just had a historically good season for a left-handed hitter against left-handed pitching, and in right field, if Aoki is going to platoon with anyone, it’s Maxwell.

So I don’t know where Valencia fits right now, other than to give the Royals enough of a threat hanging over Moustakas that it lights a fire in his ass and gets him to report to camp in tremendous physical and mental shape. I’m not discounting that; Sam Mellinger just tweeted that Moustakas is in Arizona and he hears that Moose is in great physical shape. Remember, two years ago he showed up in great shape after working out at Boras’ institute all winter, and had his best year; last year he didn’t and he didn’t. If Valencia’s presence spurs Moustakas to get back on the Gary Gaetti track, the trade is worth it. But better still if he can step in against left-handers every once in a while.

With Maxwell, Dyson, the backup catcher, and Emilio Bonifacio, I don’t even see where Valencia fits on the roster unless the Royals go to an 11-man pitching staff. I would support such a move – the Royals don’t need seven relievers – but of course, they have so many good relievers that it will be hard for them to get down to seven, let alone six. So I expect another move at some point, possibly late in spring training after Moustakas has already earned himself back in the Royals good graces. I expect Valencia or Maxwell to be on the move. But I’ll confess that the Royals rarely do what I expect.

- It’s the end of January and Brett Hayes is still the Royals’ backup catcher, and I guess it’s time to acknowledge that yes, he really is going to be the Royals’ backup catcher.

I’ve given the Royals a lot of grief over letting George Kottaras go, and I stand by the fact that he was a cheap and ideal complement to Salvador Perez’s skill set. But I have to be fair here: when the Royals got Kottaras in the first place, they did so because he was waived by the Oakland A’s. I didn’t excoriate the A’s for waiving him even as I was praising the Royals for claiming him, even after the A’s had replaced Kottaras with a slightly better version of himself – John Jaso – surrendering a very nice prospect named A.J. Cole for the privilege.

And the A’s had just acquired him at the trading deadline in 2012 from the Brewers for a marginal prospect. I guess what I’m saying is that when three different teams have given up a player with very useful skills for next-to-nothing in the span of 16 months, it’s possible that the problem isn’t with the teams, but with the player. Now, I don’t know what that problem might be. Maybe Kottaras is such a bad game-caller that pitchers simply don’t want to throw to him. Maybe he’s a clubhouse lawyer. Maybe he’s Patient Zero in some heretofore undisclosed Ebola virus epidemic in major league clubhouses. Maybe he’s Wiccan. But there’s something about him which makes him look like a much better player from a distance than up close.

I think he’s a great acquisition for the Cubs, who have the luxury of taking a gamble on a guy who could run into 20 bombs and walk 80 times if he had to play everyday. But I do wonder if the Royals might know something we don’t here.

None of this excuses the decision to go to war with Brett Hayes, a career .220/.266/.374 hitter in the majors. The Royals will tell you it doesn’t matter because Perez is going to catch 140 times anyway, and they might be right. But I’ll tell you that if anything happens to Perez, you can kiss the Royals’ playoff hopes goodbye. Perez may or may not be as valuable to the Royals as he was last year. But he’s definitely more irreplaceable this year.

- Payroll update: thanks to Jeremy Guthrie kindly agreeing to move some of his 2014 salary into a buyout of his new 2016 option, the Royals’ payroll is at a tick above $89 million pending the resolution of arbitration cases for Greg Holland and Aaron Crow.

That’s not a terrible payroll – it would be the highest in team history – but it’s only slightly higher than last year’s. And this year, the Royals get an additional $25 million* in TV revenue. Given where the Royals are on the win curve, in a place where a few additional wins could be the difference between making the playoffs and not – there’s really no defense for not upping the payroll another $10 million or so. I’d say the Royals should re-sign Ervin Santana, but 1) I’m skeptical that Santana will be able to replicate his 2013 season, and 2) if the Royals wanted to add another starter, they could have afforded Matt Garza’s new contract, with the upshot that they’d still get the extra draft pick when Santana signed elsewhere.

*: I’ve seen it reported that the $25 million is only about $15 million after taxes. This is ridiculous, ownership propaganda. Yes, owners pay taxes on their profit – but expenses are taken out before taxes. Put another way, payroll spent on players is tax-deductible. It’s important to be economically literate, because if you’re not, you’ll be taken advantage of by rich people with an agenda.

I know there are still a bunch of fans hoping and expecting that the apparent collapse of the starting pitching market – as illustrated by Garza only getting 4 years and $50 million – gives the Royals a real shot at Santana. I don’t see it. Garza may well be an aberration; his contract is so small that it makes me wonder if his medical reports are terrible, as it’s the only thing that explains the deal. (Keith Law certainly subscribes to that theory, and he would know better than I.) Also, there’s this notion that unlike every other team, the Royals wouldn’t have to give up a draft pick to sign him.

Which is silly, because of course they’d have to give up a draft pick – they’d give up the draft pick they’re expecting to get when he signs elsewhere. That will be a supplemental first rounder, maybe around pick #35 or so. That’s a less valuable pick to lose than a true first rounder, which some teams would have to give up – but it’s more valuable a pick than the second-round pick the Blue Jays – whose first-round picks are protected – or the Yankees – who have already surrendered their first-round pick – would give up.

So let it go. Santana will sign elsewhere, the Royals will get a nice draft pick for their troubles, and they’ll have money to spend elsewhere.

That is, if David Glass will spend it. What bothers me the most about ownership spending this winter is that if they don’t spend the savings they got from Guthrie’s reworking of his deal (or if they’ve, in essence, already spent it), then his restructured deal benefits neither the team nor the fans, but only Glass’s pocketbook. Because in two years, the Royals will count the $3.2 million that they now owe Guthrie in 2016 as part of the team’s payroll, and factor it in when they say they can’t spend any more money. But today, when they’re reaping the savings from the restructured deal, they’re keeping quiet.

I think David Glass wants to win. But I think he wants to make money more. Which is kind of sad, because he has plenty of the latter and precious little of the former.

- Luke Hochevar settled before his arbitration hearing. That’s not newsworthy. What’s newsworthy is that his $5.21 million contract contains an additional $400,000 in possible incentives based on games finished…and games started. If Hochevar is starting games for the Royals this season, the extra money they’ll be paying him will be the least of their costs.

- It’s late January, which means it’s Top 100 Prospect time. MLB.com’s list went up last Thursday, and Baseball Prospectus’ list went up today; Baseball America’s and Keith Law’s list go up later this week.

MLB.com has only four Royals in their Top 100, but three of them (Kyle Zimmer, Yordano Ventura, and Raul Adalberto Mondesi*) are in their top 40; by “prospect points” they have the Royals with the 6th-best farm system in the game. BP’s list is even more favorable to the Royals; they have seven Royals in their top 100, with Ventura all the way up at #12 (and Jason Parks’ pick for 2014 AL Rookie of the Year), and Miguel Almonte in the top 50.

*: We need a definitive name for Raul, son of Raul, younger brother of Raul, now that he wants to be known as Raul. RAM? RMIII?

I’ll have more to say about each prospect later, but the Royals pretty clearly still have a very deep farm system. For all my criticisms of the front office, as long as they keep churning out talent, the era of 90-loss seasons should be over for the foreseeable future. But it takes more than just good player development to begin an era of 90-win seasons.

- Speaking of wins and losses, it’s also projection season. Clay Davenport, my long-time colleague and co-founder of Baseball Prospectus, raised some hackles over the weekend with his projections, that have the Royals at 77-85 and in fourth place – behind the White Sox, which would be astonishing if true. Needless to say, that would be disappointing. Frankly, for some people it would be employment-terminating.

On the other hand, if you look at the Royals’ Fangraphs page, you will see projected WAR totals for all 30 teams on the right-hand side, and by this measurement the Royals rank as the 7th-best team in baseball, and would win the second Wild Card spot in the AL. They have the Royals so high in part because, while the Royals don’t have any superstars in their lineup (no position is expected to exceed 4.0 WAR), by signing Infante and Aoki they’ve also eliminated any holes. Shortstop is projected at 1.5 WAR; every other position is between 2 and 4. That’s not sexy, but it’s enough to get a team to 85 wins.

The problem is that 85 wins sounds great in pre-season projections, because projections by their nature compress teams around the mean. Clay’s projections, for instance, have no team winning more than 91 games. But of course some team will, and most likely at least 5 teams in the AL will win more than the 85 games that Fangraphs’ numbers would suggest for the Royals.

If the Royals want to be one of those five teams, some players are going to have exceed their projections, perhaps wildly. Someone from the Duffy/Ventura/Zimmer triumvirate will have to step up, and someone among Gordon, Butler, Hosmer, and Moustakas is going to have to post a 900 OPS and garner some MVP votes.

Which could happen. If it doesn’t, 77-85 is closer than you’d think. There’s a whole range of outcomes that are possible for the Royals. That’s not new. What’s new is that there’s a whole passel of consequences that come with them.

As Easy As 1 And 2.

“At some point, I hope they make some moves that make the team better for 2014.” – me, three weeks ago.

Well, they’ve made some moves that make the team better for 2014. Let’s start with the first one: trading Will Smith for Norichika Aoki.

My initial reaction when this deal was finalized was colored by the fact that, the night before the trade was completed, the enterprising bloggers at Royal Revival reported that a trade was in the works, and the report had enough credibility that I took it seriously. What I didn’t know at the time was that as part of his initial contract with the Brewers when he came over from Japan, Aoki was made a free agent at the end of his initial three-year contract.

So for the better part of twelve hours, I was under the impression that the Royals might be trading six years of Will Smith for four years of Aoki, which was such a slam-dunk triumph that I was crestfallen when the trade was consummated and I learned that the Royals were only acquiring Aoki for one year.

And let’s not sugarcoat this aspect of the trade: the Royals traded six years of Will Smith, the first two of which will be at near the major-league minimum, for one year of Aoki. No prospect in the Royals’ system surprised me as much over the last two years as Smith, who progressed from being a finesse guy who couldn’t miss bats in Double-A to a strikeout machine. In 2011, Smith whiffed 108 guys in 161 innings in Double-A. This year, he struck out 100 batters in 89 innings in Triple-A – and 43 batters (against just seven walks) in 33 innings in the majors.

Even if Smith is just a reliever in the end, he’s a valuable asset for the Brewers to acquire for one year of a non-star player. I totally get the trade from their standpoint.

But I also totally get it for the Royals. Aoki is a really useful player, and at least to the casual fan is likely to be really underrated. Please don’t be that fan.

Aoki’s skill set is very similar to peak-era David DeJesus, and I mean that as a compliment. Like DeJesus, Aoki is seen by many as just a really super fourth outfielder but not a guy who should play everyday. Both guys make great exhibits for why a stat like WAR is so important – by quantifying everything a player does, it can reveal that a player that does nothing spectacularly but everything competently has tremendous value.

In 2007, DeJesus hit .260 with seven homers, and the casual fan sees that and thinks he’s a below-average starter. The casual fan misses that he walked 64 times, and led the AL with 23 hit-by-pitches, and hit 29 doubles and nine triples, and was a good baserunner and a solid defensive centerfielder, and that the overall package was worth 2.6 bWAR, which made him a slightly-above-average everyday player. In fact, in DeJesus’ seven full years with the Royals, he had at least 1.9 bWAR every year, even though he hit just .289 and reached double digits in homers just twice.

Aoki hit just .286 with eight homers last year, but was worth 3.0 bWAR, because he walked a decent amount (55 times), and got hit by pitches 11 times, and was a fabulous defender in right field. Like DeJesus, Aoki is playable in center but a real asset in the corner. He didn’t have to play centerfield much in Milwaukee because of Carlos Gomez, and he hopefully won’t have to play centerfield much in Kansas City because of Lorenzo Cain.

Hopefully he’ll play right field, and hopefully he’ll play every day. The Royals could platoon him with Justin Maxwell, but Aoki has no platoon split to speak of – in his two years in the majors, he’s hit .304/.351/.395 vs. LHP, and .279/.357/.402 vs. RHP.

Presumably Aoki takes David Lough’s job, and as valuable as Lough was in 2013, the fact that the Royals aren’t taking his rookie season seriously is a very good thing. Superficially, Lough and Aoki had the same year – Lough hit .286 and slugged .413 and played great defense in right field. But he also walked 10 times in 96 games, which is why his OBP (.311) is 45 points lower than Aoki’s.

Lough actually led all AL rookies in bWAR because his defensive numbers were off the chart, but given the variability in defensive stats, I can’t take those numbers too seriously. Aoki is a huge upgrade in the one skill (OBP) that the Royals need the most, and his defensive numbers have been stellar in right field for roughly three times as many games as Lough has played there – I have much more confidence that his defense will continue to be excellent.

There’s also this interesting fact, which is that Aoki has reached base on error 29 times over the last two years, which is more than anyone else in the major leagues. (Elvis Andrus is second with 25. Mike Trout is tied for fifth with 19, because Mike Trout is awesome and does everything well.) As Ben Lindbergh pointed out, relative to the average hitter, that would raise Aoki’s OBP 12 points if we counted reaching base on error in the formula. Now, reaching base that way may seem like a random fluke, but in fact reaching base on error is at least partially a skill. Consider this: errors are much more likely to occur on ground balls than on fly balls. Aoki’s groundball rate the last two years is 58%, one of the highest rates in baseball.

Perhaps David DeJesus isn’t the best comp for Aoki – perhaps a better comp is a poor man’s Ichiro Suzuki, a left-handed bat control artist who deliberate hit the ball on the ground and ran like hell. That was Aoki’s reputation in Japan, where he became the first player ever to get 200 hits in a season twice. (Ichiro only did it once, but I believe the length of the Japanese season was extended after he came to America.) In 951 games, Ichiro hit .353/.421/.522 in Japan, with 199 steals in 232 attempts; in 984 games, Aoki hit .329/.402/.454 with 164 steals in 215 attempts. Aoki was a regular from ages 23 to 29, while Ichiro was a regular from 20 to 26. Ichiro is very clearly the better player, but then Ichiro was a consistent five-win player in the majors until he was 35. The Royals are hoping that Aoki can be a three-win guy in 2014, and it’s a good bet.

I actually wonder if Aoki might be capable of an even better performance than he’s shown, because despite being an incredibly tough guy to strike out – he whiffed just 40 times in 597 at-bats this year, the lowest strikeout rate in the majors for anyone with 400 at-bats – he only hit .286. He reversed his K/BB rate this year; as a rookie, he walked 43 times and struck out 55 times, but this year those numbers were 55 and 40. That’s a phenomenal ratio, and it’s somewhat surprising that he hasn’t hit .300 yet.

He hasn’t because his BABIPs the last two years are .304 and .295. That’s right around the major league average, but unlike pitchers, hitters have a fair amount of influence on their BABIPs, and Aoki’s style of hitting – left-handed, groundball-heavy, and fast out of the box – is conducive to high BABIPs. Ichiro’s career BABIP is .344. I don’t think Aoki’s would be that high, but given that nearly 14% of his groundballs have turned into infield singles the last two years, I could see .315 or .320 being his true level of ability. In which case he might hit .300 for the Royals.

Even if he hits .280, he’s going to be an upgrade. Aoki finally gives the Royals a prototypical leadoff hitter; as much as I liked the Royals’ decision to use Alex Gordon in that spot given their options, I agree that he would have more value lower in the order (although by “lower”, I mean “#2”, not #5.) It’s just one year, but it should be a good year.

In return the Royals gave up Smith, who by year’s end was the #1 lefty in their bullpen. He should be a good reliever for as long as any reliever can be expected to be good. Which is to say, probably no more than two or three years, because that’s what happens to relievers. And as I’ve been saying for like two years now, the Royals have to cash in some of their bullpen depth. Even with Smith’s departure, the Royals still have Greg Holland, and Luke Hochevar, and Wade Davis, and Aaron Crow, and Kelvin Herrera, and Louis Coleman, and that’s just the right-handed relievers. From the left side they still have Tim Collins, and Donnie Joseph could be a very effective situational guy if he can just learn to throw a few more strikes, and Chris Dwyer could very well be 2014’s Will Smith. But even now, the Royals need to trade at least one and maybe two of their right-handed bullpen arms.

So long as Smith stays in the bullpen, it’s unlikely that the Royals will ever regret the trade. Even if he turns into a consistently excellent left-handed set-up man, a Matt Thornton-type, that’s not the sort of sacrifice that’s going to haunt the Royals. The only way this trade leads to real regret is if Smith returns to the rotation and becomes something more than a #5 starter.

I’m not discounting the possibility that this happens. Smith’s strikeout rate had spiked in the minors before he ever moved to the bullpen, and I advocated for the Royals to try him in that role in the second half of the season. But the Royals had clearly decided that his future was in the bullpen, even though they had a far greater need for starters than relievers. The Brewers seem to think he has a chance to succeed in that role, which is why the Royals were able to trade him for Aoki in the first place. If they’re right, this will look bad for the Royals, but if he had stayed in KC he never would have had the chance in the first place. By trading him the Royals were able to leverage value from him that they themselves didn’t think he had.

And I’m not discounting the possibility that Aoki has such a good year – maybe he hits .310 with an OBP approaching .400 – that it behooves the Royals to make him a qualifying offer (likely to be around $15 million for one year) next winter, in which case they’ll obtain a supplemental first-round pick when he signs elsewhere. That pick alone would be almost worth as much as Smith. There’s a higher chance that the Royals sign Aoki to an extension either before or during the season, although given his age, it’s unclear whether that would be a wise thing to do.

In isolation, you’d rather have six years of Will Smith than one year of Norichika Aoki. But given where the Royals stand – on the fringes of playoff contention last year, with one more year of James Shields to take advantage of – selling a few wins down the road for a few wins in 2014 was an eminently sensible move.

By itself, it’s not enough to make the Royals real contenders. But it helped to set up the Royals next move, as yesterday they signed Omar Infante to a four-year, $30.25 million contract.

Infante, who will likely be the last surviving member of the legendary 2003 Detroit Tigers*, has developed from an overqualified utility player in his mid-20s into a solid everyday second baseman, largely because of his ability to put the bat on the ball.

*: And Infante did his part, hitting .222/.278/.258 as a 21-year-old rookie shortstop.

Infante wasn’t always a contact hitter. In 2004, he struck out 112 times in 503 at-bats, but also hit .264/.317/.449 with 16 homers, and given his age and power, it was assumed that he would develop into an above-average middle infielder with 20-homer power. But he cratered the next season, hitting .222/.254/.367, and changed his approach over the years to favor contact over long fly balls. Look at his strikeout rate (strikeouts as a percentage of plate appearances) since 2006:

2006: 20.1%

2007: 17.5%

2008: 13.9%

2009: 13.8%

2010: 12.2%

2011: 10.5%

2012: 11.1%

2013: 9.2%

Then consider that in 2006, the AL strikeout rate was 16.2%, and this year it was 19.8%. Infante has cut his strikeout rate by more than half during a time frame when the rest of baseball was striking out 20% more often. That’s incredibly impressive.

Thanks to his ability to put the ball in play, Infante has hit .293/.330/.410 since 2006, hitting at least .271 for eight years in a row. He’s coming off his best offensive season, having hit .318/.345/.450 for the Tigers this year, setting career highs in OPS and OPS+. And as many people have pointed out, if the Royals are paying Infante to replicate what he did in 2013, they’re probably going to be disappointed. They call them career years for a reason.

But at the same time, I don’t think 2013 was a complete fluke. Infante’s .318 average didn’t occur in a vacuum; it was accompanied by the best contact rate of his career. He hit .305 for the Braves in 2008, and .321 in 2009, with higher strikeout rates. Infante’s BABIP this year was .333, which is higher than his career mark of .310, but not egregiously so. If you adjust his BABIP to correspond to his career mark, his batting average drops…all the way to .300. If you’re a second baseman who hits .300, you’re a damn fine player even if you don’t walk much and don’t hit for a lot of power. Infante has also generally been an excellent defender at second base for years; he may be declining in that regard, but he still projects as at least average.

Which is why Infante was one of the guys on my short list of hoped-for upgrades at second base. As you know, I had suggested a few times that the Royals go after Howie Kendrick, who the Angels had hinted was available. I think Kendrick is the slightly better player, because he’s two years younger and he has a freakish ability to hit line drives, which is why his career line is .297/.335/.439 – a tick better than what Infante has done over the same eight years – even though his strikeout rate is much higher. (Kendrick has also toiled his entire career in Angel Stadium, and a move to a friendlier ballpark would presumably help his average, although for his career he has actually hit slightly better at home.)

But even if Kendrick is a slightly better player, you would have to trade talent to the Angels to get him. Maybe it wouldn’t take Yordano Ventura, but it would take more than just a fringe guy either. And Kendrick will actually make more money the next two years ($9.35 million in 2014, $9.5 million in 2015) than Infante. Infante costs the Royals less money and he doesn’t cost them any talent.

What he does cost them is a commitment in 2016 and 2017, and Infante will be 35 years old in the final year of his contract. Which is why, as much interest as I had in him as a solution to the Royals’ second base woes, word of a fourth guaranteed season worried me. I was particularly worried when the rumors were that he wanted 4 years and $40 million to sign.

Instead, he got 4 and $30, and like Jason Vargas, while I don’t like the fourth guaranteed season, the per-year average is so reasonable that if you just think of it as a three-year deal with the fourth year thrown in for free, it’s actually quite reasonable. Given the ownership limitations that have been placed on the budget, Dayton Moore couldn’t entice players with a higher annual salary, so instead he improvised by adding length to their contract, keeping the 2014 budget down. It means the Royals may have to pay the piper in 2017, when 35-year-old Infante and 34-year-old Vargas will combine to make around $15 million. But even if they’re both useless by that point, it’s not much more dead money than the Royals spent on Jose Guillen alone for most of his contract. Dead money at the back end of a contract is the price you pay for value on the front.

So this deal can still work for the Royals even if Infante is useless at the end of it, so long as they get value at the beginning. But will they? Age 32 is the age at which league-average hitters tend to fall off a cliff, and Infante turns 32 in two weeks.

Except lumping all “league-average hitters” together is inaccurate. It’s true that hitters of a certain type – right-handed, not-particularly-athletic outfielders with average power and average contact skills – can fall off a cliff. (Again: Jose Guillen, everyone. Kevin McReynolds. Jason Bay. Etc.) But Infante is a very different type of player – a middle infielder (which implies a certain level of athleticism) with extreme contact skills. How should we expect him to age?

To answer that question, I tried to come up with a list of comparable players, but found that rather difficult. Over the last three years, Infante has hit .288/.318/.414, so I came up with a list of players who, over the same age range (from age 29 to 31), in at least 1000 plate appearances:

- hit between .273 and .303

- slugged between .399 and .429

- on-based between .303 and .333

And I also limited it to players who struck out in fewer than one in every eight plate appearances, i.e. 12.5% or less. I went all the way back to 1981. I expected to find a couple dozen players who fit the criteria. I found two.

One was Johnny Estrada, and man is that not a comp you want to associate with Infante. Estrada hit .278/.296/.403 as a 31-year-old catcher for the Brewers. At age 32, he batted 55 times, hit .170/.200/.170, and was never heard from again.

In fairness, that’s a weird comp. Estrada had the same offensive profile but was a very different player – he was a catcher, he was bad defensively, he switch-hit, and he was a late-bloomer, not sticking in the majors until he was 28.

The other player was Freddy Sanchez, who also shows up as Infante’s #1 comp according to PECOTA. Sanchez is an excellent comp – he hit .289/.323/.410 over the three years in question, and hit .293/.326/.416 at age 31 in 2009. He then signed a two-year, $12 million contract with the Giants. Sanchez hit well for the next two years – he batted .292/.342/.397 at age 32, and .289/.332/.397 at age 33 – but injuries kept him off the field a lot. In 2011 he signed a one-year, $6 million extension, which turned out to be wasted money as Sanchez missed all of 2012 with a torn labrum in his shoulder. He hasn’t played since.

That’s the real risk for Infante – not that he stops hitting suddenly, but that he gets hurt. Second basemen get taken out on double play slides a lot, and unlike shortstops their back is frequently to the runner. We can hope that MLB’s sudden realization that injuries are not just “part of the game”, and their move to eliminate home plate collisions, will also lead to steps being taken to keep second baseman from being destroyed by a baserunner. But in the meantime, that has to be a concern. Infante has never played 150 games in a season, and last season he missed a month with a torn ligament in his ankle.

While he didn’t meet the criteria I set exactly, Placido Polanco is sort of the harmonic ideal of what Infante can be – an extreme contact hitter who smokes line drives all over the park. As a 31-year-old second baseman for the Tigers this year, Infante hit .318/.345/.450, striking out in 9.2% of his plate appearances; as a 31-year-old second baseman for the Tigers in 2007, Polanco hit .341/.388/.458, striking out in 4.7% of his plate appearances. Polanco aged very well over the next four years; he hit .307, .285, .298, and .277, and his OPS+ declined gently from 102 to 90 to 94 to 86. I’d be very happy if Infante followed the same route.

Realistically, Infante will probably be a league-average second baseman for the next two years. He’s probably going to miss 30 or 40 games a year, by 2016 he’s going to be below-average if still playable, and by 2017 it’s a good thing that the Royals will have Raul Adalberto Mondesi.

And you know what? That’s okay. As Ben Lindbergh wrote, no position in baseball has been a bigger hole for its team over the last three years than second base has been for the Royals. Adequacy has its virtues. Yes, it’s possible that Emilio Bonifacio would be adequate, but it’s also possible that he’d turn into a higher-paid Chris Getz. It’s possible that Johnny Giavotella would be up to the task, and if I were a rebuilding team I’d be looking to acquire him for peanuts, but now is not the time for a gamble; the time for the Royals to invest patience in him was two years ago. It’s possible that Christian Colon turns into an everyday player; it’s also possible that the Sphinx in Egypt might be covered in snow tomorrow. (No, it wasn't.) Infante is just average, but average is a hell of an upgrade, and average players get $10 million a year on the open market. The Royals are paying $7.5 million a year for an average player they really, really needed.

This has the ripple effect of making Emilio Bonifacio a super-utility player, who in a pinch is capable of playing literally every non-battery position. Bonifacio is the first guy off the bench if Infante, Alcides Escobar, or Mike Moustakas gets hurt, and is capable of filling in for weeks at a time if needed. As a switch-hitter there will always be times when his ability to get on base will make him a useful pinch-hitting option, and he’s the first pinch-runner off the bench not named Jarrod Dyson. Ideally I could see him doing what Mark McLemore did for the Mariners late in his career, playing six different positions, getting on base at a .350 clip and stealing 30 bases a year while batting 400 times. (That’s basically what Bonifacio did in 2011.)

One of the hidden reasons for the Royals’ success this season was that their roster was so healthy it was almost spooky. Perez missed a week with a concussion, Dyson missed a month with a high ankle sprain, and Lorenzo Cain missed a month with a strained oblique muscle. Chris Getz missed two weeks with a left knee sprain. Unless I’m missing someone, those are literally the only DL stints for a Royals position player all season. (The pitchers were equally healthy, and given the nature of the position that’s even more remarkable.)

Now, some of this is skill – the Royals are a young team, and they have a fantastic training staff. But this degree of health, where only four position players go on the DL at all, and none for more than a month, is a testament to luck as well. The Royals are unlikely to be this healthy in 2014. But by signing Infante, the Royals now have about as solid a bench as you can have in this day of 12-man pitching staff, where AL teams carry just four bench players. The Royals have Bonifacio to play anywhere in the infield, and two of Lough, Dyson, and Maxwell to play the outfield or DH, and George Kott…okay, they have three-quarters of an amazing bench.

(Seriously…what the hell were the Royals thinking with Kottaras? Bob Dutton strongly implied it was due to money, but I have a tough time swallowing that, because I just can’t stomach that any team – not even the Royals – would expose themselves at such a key position to save two hundred grand. Perez was already the team’s most important player, but now an extended injury to him would absolutely cripple the team. With Kottaras you’d take a defensive hit, but your lineup would survive for a month if need be. With Brett Hayes…you have an automatic out in the lineup. Given everything the Royals are doing to win in 2014, exposing themselves so brazenly behind the plate is unacceptable, and I have to think they’re going to sign a better backup at some point.)

Aside from catcher, the Royals can weather an injury anywhere on the field. Which is important, because they’re going to have an injury somewhere on the field in 2014.

Almost as beneficial as acquiring Aoki and Infante is who the Royals didn’t acquire: Carlos Beltran. Look, I love Beltran as much as the next Royals fan, and when the Royals season ended and Beltran shined on center stage again in October, I thought he’d look great in right field next year.

But once emotions wound down and I looked at the situation rationally, I realized how poor a fit he would be. Beltran is, at this stage of his career, a subpar defensive player. Given how integral the Royals’ league-leading defense was to their success last year, and given that they just signed another contact-oriented starter in Vargas to go along with Jeremy Guthrie, is it worth breaking up that defense to get Beltran’s bat? Even Beltran acknowledged that he would be better off playing for an AL team so he could DH occasionally and rest his legs, but the Royals have a full-time DH in Butler. You could trade Butler and play Beltran exclusively at DH, but how much better is Beltran purely as a hitter? Keep in mind that many studies have shown that there is a modest but real “DH penalty” – that a player who does nothing all game but swing the bat four times hits slightly worse than a player who stays in the flow of the game by taking the field every inning.

And even if Beltran, by virtue of his baserunning, is a better offensive player than Butler…is he so much better that he’s worth spending $15 million a year on? Is he worth giving up the #19 pick in next year’s draft for? The Royals seemed to be working through this exact set of questions over the past month, and seemed interested in Beltran – particularly if they could move Butler for a valuable piece – but only at a price that made sense. And it’s probably best for all parties that he signed with the Yankees instead.

The Yankees also wanted Infante, but this time the Royals beat them, and I’d much rather that they win the bidding on the player they actually won. Instead of paying Beltran $15 million, they’ll pay Infante, Aoki, and Butler $17.5 million in 2014. They gave up Will Smith, but they didn’t give up the #19 pick, and I’m honestly not sure which commodity is more valuable.

The only redeeming feature of signing Beltran was that the Royals could have traded Butler, and if they really could have gotten Nick Franklin for him straight up, that’s a hell of a tough call, because I think Franklin could be an above-average second baseman if not a minor star. But with the caveat that you never know what the Mariners are thinking – as Geoff Baker exposed, they might be the most dysfunctional organization in baseball right now – I just have trouble thinking the Royals could have pulled off that deal.

I know I’ve become a lightning rod over the past year for my visceral, vociferous hatred of the Shields trade, but I hope I’ve made it clear with this column: I understand that there are a times when a team is close enough to contention that they’re justified in sacrificing the long term for the short term. These are the types of moves you make when you’re all-in. You trade a potentially excellent reliever for one season of an everyday outfielder. You throw a little too much money or maybe one too many years on an everyday second baseman that you really need.

There’s risk in both these moves, but the downside is manageable. You don’t have to make every move with an eye towards the long term as well as the short term. You just have to avoid trading future stars making the league minimum. Dayton Moore improved the 2014 Royals with each of these moves, without mortgaging the future of this franchise.

So yes, I like both moves, and I think that together, the moves get the Royals closer to the top of the division. But they’re not there yet. My extremely preliminary projection on 810 WHB last week was 82-80; I’d revise that to 84-78 with the Infante signing. That may seem pessimistic, but teams that improve as much as the Royals did this year usually fall back the next, and so much of their success was predicated on a defensive performance that doesn’t seem sustainable. 84-78, in isolation, would be a perfectly good followup to 86-76.

But it won’t be for the 2014 Royals, precisely because Dayton Moore put up a huge roadblock at the end of the 2014 season, when Shields leaves as a free agent. The good news is that the division is very much for the taking, because I really don’t understand what the Tigers have done this off-season. I liked the Prince Fielder-for-Ian Kinsler swap, even though Fielder is probably going to be better in 2014, because it freed up payroll that I assumed the Tigers would spend elsewhere.

But instead they gave up Doug Fister for a laughably bad return; Fister is basically 85% of the pitcher that Shields is, with two years left until free agency, and they got a potential #4 starter, a utility infielder, and a left-handed reliever. They then spent a good chunk of their savings on Joe Nathan, who is an awesome reliever and a Royal-killer extraordinare but pitches 60 innings a year. They just spent $5 million a year on Rajai Davis, who is a really good fourth outfielder and a fantastic basestealer and yet is not named Shin-Soo Choo.

The Tigers could be a significantly worse team on paper next year and still win 90 games, but that’s just it: I think 90 wins might be enough to take the division. The Royals are close enough to that goal that they could get there if everything breaks right. But that also means that a few extra wins, one more big move, would have a huge impact on their playoff odds next year.

At the moment, the Royals’ payroll stands at $94 million next year, which would be a team record, and like Sam Mellinger I don’t think David Glass deserves criticism for the team’s spending as it stands right now. But I also don’t think he deserves undue praise. There’s another $25 million coming in national TV revenue, and right now they’ve spent maybe $10 million of it on payroll. And that doesn’t count the increase in revenue from a higher attendance and higher ticket costs next year thanks to the team’s success this year. (The prices on Opening Day tickets have nearly doubled for some seats, for instance.) They can afford to go higher.

Which is why the rumors that the Royals have discussed a Billy Butler trade with the Blue Jays has me so intrigued. It’s not that I want the Royals to trade Butler – it’s that trading Butler and prospects would only make sense in exchange for a true difference maker. Could the Royals trade Butler and prospects for Jose Bautista? Could they deal Lorenzo Cain in a deal for Colby Rasmus, who has only one year left until free agency and the Blue Jays are reportedly shopping? (I won’t even mention R.A. Dickey, because I don’t want to get my hopes up and…damn. Too late.)

If you’re all-in for 2014, you’re all-in for 2014. The Royals are one more upgrade (and no, signing Nelson Cruz does not count) short of being serious contenders next year, and having gotten this far without having given up any minor league talent, they can afford – within reason – to trade some talent off their still-deep farm system. They can afford to take their payroll all the way to nine figures. Between their bullpen and their stable of outfielders – one of Lough, Dyson, or Maxwell will have to be moved – they have secondary pieces that they can trade without even feeling it. And if need be, they could even get instant payroll relief if they trade Greg Holland or Luke Hochevar or Wade Davis.

So right now, the Royals have had a pretty good off-season. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Vargas signing, mostly because he wasn’t Phil Hughes, but I didn’t hate it, and the Royals didn’t overpay. Aoki and Infante give the Royals a new #1 and #2 hitter (granted, Infante isn’t the team’s best #2 hitter, but you know that’s where he’ll bat) at a reasonable price.

But one more big move for 2014 would turn “pretty good” into “excellent”. I know the Royals are hinting that they’re done. I just hope that Dayton Moore is playing possum one more time.

Dayton, More. (And More.)

Meh.

If you thought it was incredibly easy to snark about the Royals’ press release on Black Friday that “ROYALS AND DAYTON MOORE AGREE TO TWO-YEAR EXTENSION”, you are right. I confess to succumbing to temptation on Twitter a time or two that day.

And even now, I want to blast the extension, not because I hate Dayton Moore (I don’t) or because I want him fired (I don’t), but because it doesn’t sit right to me that finally putting together a winning season in your seventh full year on the job, after cashing in a substantial piece of the future to do so, should be rewarded so quickly. Once upon a time Moore criticized “our immediate-gratification society” when it came to Royals fans expecting a winning team. Well, this contract extension smacks of his own immediate gratification. Moore was already under contract for 2014; surely ownership could wait until mid-season to see if the Royals built on this year’s success before extending him.

Just like the last time he got a contract extension, back in 2009, Moore has more contract extensions (2) than winning seasons (1) during his tenure as GM. That’s a difficult morsel of information to digest. To be frank, I’m not convinced that Moore deserves an extension.

But that’s the wrong way to look at this. I’ve come around to the position that extending Dayton Moore’s contract for two more years was the right thing to do, for two reasons:

1) A General Manager does his job best when his interests are aligned with his organization’s interests;

2) I was focusing on the wrong word in the press release.

As I said on Twitter a few minutes after digesting the news, as my opinion on the extension continued to evolve*, if Moore had gotten this contract extension last November, would he have traded Wil Myers for James Shields last December?

*: In retrospect, working through my thought processes on social media in front of twenty-five thousand people probably isn’t the smartest thing to do, and I probably need to stop doing it.

I don’t know the answer to that question; in all honesty, I think Moore might have done it anyway. But this brings us back around to the concept of moral hazard.

To reiterate – I’ve said this before, but I don’t want to be misunderstood on this subject – I don’t think that Moore consciously let his decision to trade Myers for Shields be influenced by the fact that if the Royals didn’t win more games in 2013, he might be out of a job before he’d get the chance to reap the benefits of Myers in 2014 and beyond. Again: I think he might have made the trade anyway.

But the subconscious influence that job security has on a GM’s decisions? I think that has to be a factor, because job security is a factor in how we all make decisions in our job. I’m a doctor, and I’m aware that one of the reasons – admittedly one of several – health care costs are so high in this country is that every day, physicians make decisions about a patient’s treatment that have a direct effect on their own paycheck.

Every doctor in America will swear up and down that every decision they make, every test they order and every procedure they recommend, is done purely with the patient’s best interest in mind. And yet every study done on the subject shows that when a physician’s income is not directly tied to the amount of work that they do (like doctors who are employed for a fixed salary), that health care costs drop, sometimes dramatically.

I am self-employed as a doctor, and I know that every time I present treatment options to a patient, and it so happens that one treatment option can be administered by my office (and generate lots of revenue) and one treatment option is not, that there is going to be a subconscious influence on myself to steer the patient in a particular direction. I’m aware of that influence because the minute I stop being aware of it is the minute it starts impacting patient care. It’s the reason I rarely see drug reps in my office, and blocked my prescribing data from drug companies so that they cannot see my prescribing patterns and attempt to reward or punish me as they see fit. And in my experience, the physicians who take the most umbrage to the notion that they might let their own financial considerations affect the care of their patients are the ones who game the system the most.

Dayton Moore is by all accounts an honorable man, but he’s human, and I’m pretty sure he’s subject to the same kinds of subconscious influences that the rest of us are. And letting a GM go into the final season of his contract without an extension is a gigantic subconscious influence on him that the upcoming season is all that matters. It’s a huge conflict of interest between what matters to the GM – 2014 – and what matters to the organization, the fans, and the owners, which includes 2015 and beyond.

Extending Moore for two more years eliminates these specific concerns. Naturally, Moore has tremendous pressure on him for the Royals to win in 2014, which have nothing to do with the length of his contract and everything to do with the fact that it’s Year 8, and even his beloved model of the Long Rebuilding Project, Terry Ryan’s Minnesota Twins, won 94 games and went to the playoffs in Year 8. But this eliminates the temptation before the season to trade three wins in 2015 for one win in 2014. And if next season does go south in a hurry, it eliminates the temptation to not cash out quickly, whether that means trading James Shields or Alex Gordon or whoever.

The alternative would be to let a GM who just won the franchise’s most games since 1989 to twist in the wind. And as Sam Mellinger put it, “letting a GM go lame-duck a year after the franchise’s most successful season in a generation is the kind of nonsense the Royals used to do.” If Moore’s contract had run through 2015, I doubt we’d be talking about an extension right now. But the timing is what it is. The last year of a GM’s contract is a loss leader of sorts – the decision to extend or not has to be made the year before, which means eventually, that last year is going to be eaten when ownership decides a change has to be made*.

*: I’ve been told that Brian Sabean has worked on the last year of a contract multiple times in San Francisco, but aside from the fact that I’ve really never quite got a handle on how the Giants do business, it’s quite possible that a handshake agreement was already in place.

I accept everything I just wrote rationally, but I’m still trying to accept it emotionally, because I’m still not over the Moral Hazard Trade of last winter. Or as Matt Klaassen tweeted, “Without job security, Moore might do something nuts like trade six years of a good hitting prospect for two years of a good starting pitcher.”

I know some of you want me to get over the Myers trade, and I’d like to get over it myself. But I can’t “get over” a trade that so many people still think was a good idea. The point of rehashing the trade over and over again is so that we might learn something from it, but too many Royals fans don’t think that there’s anything to learn. So long as that’s the case, I will keep doing my best to educate.

Giving Moore a contract extension this winter feels on some level like shutting the barn door after the horses got out, even if – in light of the Royals’ 86-76 season – it makes perfect sense that he got an extension this year instead of last. But this brings me to the other reason, the one that really convinced me to accept the extension:

The most important word in the press release isn’t “EXTENSION”. It’s “TWO”.

In 2009, Moore got a four-year contract extension. Four years is an eternity for a GM. Dave Dombrowski was hired by the Tigers in 2002; the Tigers didn’t even hit rock bottom until 2003, when they lost 119 games, and by 2006 he had the Tigers headed to the World Series. Andrew Friedman took over as the Rays GM after the 2005 season; four years later he had followed up an AL pennant with an 84-78 season that is the only year in the past six when the Rays haven’t won 90 games. I didn’t understand the extension then, but as I wrote at the time, “I’m fine with Dayton Moore getting a four-year contract extension…as long as it’s really a one-year extension with three option years.”

That’s obviously not how it works for a four-year extension. But for a two-year extension…well, having just established that the last year of a GM’s contract is really just window dressing, it’s safe to say that this time around, Moore really did get a one-year extension with an option for 2016.

And that seems reasonable to me. Moore deserves to keep his job; while the Myers trade may rankle me for a long time to come, it was made possible by drafting Myers in the third round in the first place. Moore made an enormous commitment to developing talent from Latin America, and for all the criticisms levied against Moore for the length of his timetable, when it comes to Latin American players it really does take eight years to turn a 16-year-old malnourished kid into a 24-year-old major leaguer. That pipeline has already delivered Salvador Perez and Kelvin Herrera, and Yordano Ventura just arrived, and more is on the way. The long-term contract for Salvador Perez may wind up being as much a net positive for the Royals as the Myers trade was a net negative.

It’s certainly possible that if the Royals fall apart next season, and start 34-47, this extension may save Moore’s job for another year. But I think that’s pretty unlikely. Much more likely on the downside is that the Royals regress a little and finish 79-83 or something. In which case, a contract extension now saves the Glass family from the difficult decision of whether to extend Moore next year, when at that point they wouldn't want to commit for more than another half-season.

If the Royals tread water in 2014, then 2015 becomes a pivotal year for Moore to show that, even without Shields, and with Alex Gordon and Billy Butler in their last contract year, they can win. This extension vastly reduces the odds that Moore gets fired in 2014 – but it really doesn’t change the odds for 2015 at all. If they don’t win by then, everyone’s job is on the line – Moore in the next-to-last year of his contract, and Ned Yost in the last year of his. There’s a massive housecleaning pending in 2015 if the Royals don’t take the next step, and I’m sure that even with a contract through 2016, Moore is well aware of that. You can’t eliminate moral hazard entirely, but you can contain it.

Does Dayton Moore deserve a contract extension? To quote William Munny from Unforgiven one more time, Deserve’s got nothing to do with it. This is what’s best for the Royals as an organization, and that’s all that really matters.

- As you might have noticed, Phil Hughes signed with the Minnesota Twins last week. He got a three year deal for $24 million, which means that he’s making the same annual salary as Jason Vargas, but was guaranteed one less year.

I don’t know how to process this, other than to say that I evidently have a much different view of Hughes than pretty much the rest of baseball. I mean, I can criticize the Royals all I want, but 28 other teams didn’t see Hughes as worth more than $8 million a year either. And even within the analytical field, there are a lot of people who think that the Twins overpaid or overcommitted to Hughes, both national baseball writers (e.g. Keith Law, Jay Jaffe) and Royals-specific ones (e.g. Craig Brown).

But I’ll stand by what I’ve said before, which is that Phil Hughes looks to me like a league-average starter with upside, that getting out of Yankee Stadium will have a huge positive impact on his career, and that a 3-year, $24 million contract looks to me like a bargain.

Consider this: Jason Vargas has a 4.30 career ERA, and Phil Hughes has a 4.54 career ERA, but if you just look at their performance on the road – where Vargas doesn’t get the benefit of Safeco and Angel Stadium, and Hughes doesn’t have to deal with Yankee Stadium’s short right-field porch – here are their numbers:

Jason Vargas: 5.17 ERA, 1.44 HR/9, 1.78 K/BB

Phil Hughes: 4.10 ERA, 0.86 HR/9, 2.52 K/BB

I’ve seen many people criticize Hughes’ fastball for having no movement and being a gopher pitch, but away from their vastly different home ballpark, Vargas gives up home runs 67% more often than Hughes.

Vargas throws 87-88; Hughes throws 92-93. Even factoring in the natural advantage that left-handed pitchers have, Hughes has the advantage. And while Hughes is just 27, Vargas is 30, and will turn 31 before spring training.

Nonetheless, the Royals had more interest in Vargas than Hughes, to the point where they gave a longer contract to an older pitcher with a lower strikeout rate.

I can’t say that Hughes is 100% guaranteed to be better than Vargas, because we can’t say 100% about anything in baseball. The Rays were, probabilistically speaking, probably about 90% likely to win the Scott Kazmir-for-Victor Zambrano trade. The Royals had about a 10% chance…no, 1% chance…no, 0.1% chance to win the Neifi Perez for Jermaine Dye trade. We’re always dealing in probabilities here, and being wrong about a single transaction doesn’t mean you’re wrong any more than giving up a single to the next batter he faces means that Clayton Kershaw sucks.

But I think the odds are something like 70% that Hughes will be a better pitcher than Vargas over the next four years, which is massive in baseball terms. (Most of that 30% involves some underlying arm problem with Hughes that has the rest of baseball looking askance at him.) Vargas may superficially look better in 2014, because the Royals will probably have a well-above-average defense, but if you strip that away I suspect Hughes will be better next year – and that the gap will increase over time. Again, I could be mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong to criticize a decision the Royals made. But it also wouldn’t be the first time I was right.

- Finally, I can’t write this long and not mention the toughest news of the week, which is that Bob Dutton is leaving the Kansas City Star to cover the Seattle Mariners for the Tacoma News Tribune. The departure of a beat writer shouldn’t be this sad, but Bob’s not your ordinary beat writer.

For one thing, he’s the beat writer for the only daily newspaper in town. The Yankees have half-a-dozen beat writers covering them for different outlets; the loss of one is barely felt. But aside from the Royals’ internal reporters (mostly Dick Kaegel) with MLB.com, Bob is the sole conduit for the day-to-day happenings for the team.

And he’s been that conduit for a long, long time. Bob’s been the full-time beat writer since 2002 or so, but he covered the Royals on at least a part-time basis since  before the Star launched their website and I could read it every day starting in 1996 or 1997. We started Baseball Prospectus in late 1995, so Bob’s Royals beat covers virtually my entire career as a writer and analyst. I don’t remember a time, since the internet unveiled the secrets of the world to me and I could read about the Royals from a local perspective, where I didn’t see Bob’s byline.

And he’s really, really good at his job. Think about this: he’s watched the Royals play over 2000 games over the last 15-20 years, and none of them had pennant implications for the team. The Saturday game against the Rangers with a week left in the season this September was, objectively, the most important game the Royals had played in 28 years. It’s not that Bob is a Royals fan – he’ll tell you that his job is simply to cover the team – but I can’t imagine how hard it must be to take your craft so seriously, to nail your deadlines and capture the feel of the game and get player quotes and weave them into your narrative, when the stakes are so minimal, game after game, year after year. And he does it so, so well. Has done it.

I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Bob over the last decade; we generally would get together for a meal when he was in Chicago covering the Royals once a year, and he’s always treated me as a peer even in the days before Moneyball came out, when people like me were looked at with disdain by most traditional journalists.

The world has changed, and I no longer need to explain to print writers who I am, what I do, or why they should give a damn about what I have to say. But it wasn’t always that way, and my connection with the point guy for Royals information could have been much more tenuous or combative in the early days. In another market, it probably would have been. But it wasn’t, because Bob’s a professional, and I am truly grateful for that. I’ll miss him dearly.