Friday, June 10, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have so many questions I want to ask Yost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If only that were the case.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ned Yost of 2005 would have.

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

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

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

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

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Draft Preview 2011.

(See updates at bottom.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Cole
2. Bundy
3. Rendon
4. Hultzen
5. Bauer
6. Starling

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

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

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

2009: Aaron Crow (#12)
2006: Luke Hochevar (#1)
2004: Matt Campbell (#29)
2004: J.P. Howell (#31)
1999: Kyle Snyder (#7)
1999: Mike MacDougal (#25)
1999: Jay Gehrke (#32)
1998: Jeff Austin (#4)
1998: Matt Burch (#30)
1997: Dan Reichert (#7)
1993: Jeff Granger (#3)
1992: Sherard Clinkscales (#31)

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Royals Today: 6/2/11

Some random thoughts for your perusal:

- Twelve of the Royals’ first 55 games went extra innings, and I think it’s easy to miss how unusual that is. Two years ago, the Royals played nine extra-inning games all season. The franchise record is 22 in a season. The Tigers have gone overtime just twice all year.

What makes this so unusual is that the Royals have, by and large, avoided the massive decrease in scoring that has afflicted most of the majors this year – on both ends. The Royals are sixth in the league in runs, but next-to-last in runs allowed, so on the whole 529 runs have been scored in their 55 games, or 9.62 runs per game.

You would expect extra-inning games to become more prevalent as run-scoring decreases – the fewer runs each team is expected to score, the more likely that both teams are going to end up with the same integer at the end of regulation. (This is why soccer games end in a tie so often.) The A’s, who also have played 12 extra-inning games, have allowed the fewest runs in the AL and have scored the third-fewest. All told, just 406 runs have been scored in their 57 games (7.12 per game) – 26% fewer runs than typically seen in a Royals game. I would expect the A’s to play a lot of extra-inning games; not so the Royals.

I think it would be dangerous to try to read any meaning into this; as this XKCD comic illustrates, sometimes random things happen. The Royals do have a very deep bullpen that can keep opponents off the scoreboard for extended stretches, as they did Friday night. And the Royals have hit particularly well in the ninth inning; they have a .288/.356/.472 line and have scored 27 runs in just 44 innings (some of which ended early on a walk-off.) But I don’t think the Royals are inherently more likely to play extra-inning games than any other team, and the franchise record of 22 extra-inning games in a season is more likely safe than not.

- That said, all those extra-inning games have certainly taken a toll on the pitching staff. In 55 games, the Royals have thrown 507 innings – an average of 9.22 innings per game. That’s very unusual – most teams average less than 9 innings of pitching per game, because whatever extra innings are played are more than made up for by the fact that teams don’t pitch the bottom of the ninth on the road when they’ve lost. Last year, the Royals averaged 8.87 innings a game. The Tigers this season have averaged just 8.82 innings.

Add in a starting rotation that’s been very erratic at times, and Royals’ relievers have combined to throw 192 innings this year. Only the Reds have thrown more, with 198, and they’ve played two additional games.

In the same number of games as the Tigers, the Royals have pitched 22 more innings, almost the equivalent of one additional full-time reliever. I hate the idea of an eight-man bullpen in the abstract, and I hope the Royals send one down in favor of a fourth bench player soon. But I can understand why they’ve felt the need to have an eighth reliever over the last two weeks.

- On Friday, the Royals played a game that was simultaneously an extra-inning affair and a blowout, thanks to the five-run 14th. Homers by Melky Cabrera, Eric Hosmer, and Brayan Pena not only iced the game, but it led to my favorite stat of the year (at the time): The Royals had hit more home runs in the 14th inning this year (3) than they have in the 1st inning (2).

That stat was rendered invalid when Alex Gordon and Eric Hosmer went deep in the first inning on Monday, but it’s still true that they’ve hit more homers in the 14th than in the 3rd inning (2) or 5th inning (2). No, it doesn’t mean anything. Yes, it’s still awesome.

- Alex Gordon’s stats broken down:

3/31/11 to 5/1/11: .339/.395/.545
5/3/11 to 5/19/11: .153/.219/.254
5/20/11 to 6/1/11: .320/.404/.640

We all knew that Gordon would eventually hit a slump after his hot start; the question was whether he’d navigate himself out of it. He seems to have passed this test; after looking helpless at the plate for two weeks, he’s back on a tear. In his last 12 games, he has four doubles, four homers, and – reassuring those who thought his performance had come at the expense of plate discipline – seven walks. It’s probably a coincidence that his hot stretch started just after he was moved into the leadoff spot, but still, it clearly hasn’t hurt his offense. In 14 games as a leadoff hitter, he’s scored 10 runs. And remember: the leadoff hitter gets the most at-bats. If Gordon isn’t in the leadoff spot last Friday night, he doesn’t bat in the ninth inning, he doesn’t go upper deck on Neftali Feliz, and the Royals lose.

I was asked on the radio a few weeks ago as to who, at the end of the season, would wind up as the Royals’ most valuable player. My answer was Alex Gordon, and with a nod to Hosmer, I’ll stand by that. Gordon’s overall line of .285/.351/.489 may not look like much in this Year of the Pitcher, but he is clearly the best left fielder in the American League:

Highest Cumulative OPS by AL Left Fielders

1. KC, 845 (.286/.361/.485)
2. NYY, 732 (.246/.321/.412)
3. OAK, 724 (.232/.321/.403)
4. TB, 682 (.227/.293/.389)
5. BAL, .675 (.224/.291/.383)

Granted, that list says more about the state of left fielders in the AL than it does about Gordon. I mean, my God, the Rays’ left fielders have combined to hit .227/.293/.389, and that’s the fourth-best line in the American League? What the hell? This is purely an AL phenomenon, incidentally. The Royals rank fourth in the majors behind the Cardinals, Brewers, and Marlins. The Yankees, who are second in the AL, are TWELFTH in the majors. Ten of the 16 teams in the NL have had better production from their left fielders than every AL team except the Royals.

I have no idea why the left fielders of the American League are suddenly and collectively hitting like 1980s-era backup catchers. But the Royals have been unilaterally and conspicuously spared this fate. Gordon still strikes out too much, and his power tool still outstrips his home run production. But he leads the league in doubles, he gets on base, he’s a very good baserunner, and he’s taken to left field remarkably well. He’s shown excellent range, has yet to make an error in left, and has a third baseman’s arm that has racked up five baserunner kills (outfield assists) already.

They don’t have to make a decision today, but if Gordon maintains his performance through the end of the season, the Royals ought to make a long-term deal for Gordon one of their highest off-season priorities. He’s under contract for two more years after 2011, so he’s in the same contractual spot that Zack Greinke was in when he signed his four-year deal. I think an appropriate deal for Gordon would be in the same range, perhaps for three years with an option for a fourth, or a four-year deal with an option for a fifth. A four-year deal would lock up Gordon from the age of 28 to 31, with an option at age 32, insuring that the Royals get his prime years without being on the hook for his decline phase. The money wouldn’t be oppressive – maybe $20 million for 3 years or $30 million for 4 years.

As much as Soria’s mysterious decline has taken the Royals a step backwards from contention in the near term, Gordon’s breakout has taken them a leap forward. Two months of data is not enough to make a decision on, obviously. But if his final line is anywhere close to where it is now, the Royals would be well-served to lock him up. And I think they will. It’s been a gigantic struggle for Gordon to get to this point, but all’s well that ends well. Let’s just hope it ends well.

- On the other hand, here are the splits for the Royals’ other corner outfielder:

Jeff Francoeur, 3/31/11 – 5/4/11: .316/.357/.623, 8 HR in 29 games
Jeff Francoeur, 5/5/11 – 6/1/11: .232/.286/.305, 1 HR in 24 games

There’s a reason why, a few weeks ago, I speculated that while Gordon’s breakout was for real, Frenchy was – once again – just a tease. Francoeur hit like peak-era Jermaine Dye for about five weeks, and like nadir-era Jeff Francoeur since.

That’s not to say the Royals should write him off. His overall season line is still .278/.325/.478, which is a pretty awesome line in this day and age. While Francoeur, unlike Gordon, isn’t under contract beyond this season (mutual options don’t count), the Royals still shouldn’t be in any rush to make big decisions with Francoeur. Let him play every day for the next six weeks. If he bounces back and his overall line is even better in mid-July than it is now, well, then they have to at least consider a long-term deal. There would obviously be a lot of risk involved – more than there would be with Gordon, I think – and the Royals would also need to decide what to do with Wil Myers, who is still expected to warrant the right field job by the end of 2012. But having too much talent on hand is never a bad problem.

More likely, though, Francoeur’s numbers will continue to creep slowly downward, but his April performance ought to keep his overall line high enough to warrant some suitors on the trade market. Not massive interest, but enough to get a legitimate prospect or two.

I’ve mentioned before that Wilson Betemit is likely to earn Type B free agent status at the end of the year. Thanks to the Elias Sports Bureau’s outdated formula (seriously – it was devised in the 1980s and hasn’t been updated since), Francoeur probably will too. The rating system values playing time, and Francoeur was pretty much a full-time player in 2010, and is certainly one this year. The system values counting numbers like homers and RBIs, and acts like OBP doesn’t exist. So if nothing else, Francoeur has value as a draft pick generator.

(Update: I heard from Tim Dierkes, the proprietor of the indispensable MLB Trade Rumors website, who informs me that the Elias rating formula does, in fact, include OBP as one of the categories. My apologies for the error. However, not only are average, HR, and RBI categories, but the fifth category is...plate appearances. I still think Francoeur is likely to merit Type B status at the end of the year.)

All this presumes that Dayton Moore isn’t so infatuated with Francoeur that he’s going to offer Frenchy a long-term deal no matter how he plays the rest of the season. That’s certainly possible, but if nothing else, Myers’ presence should reduce the temptation to sign Francoeur just for the sake of having a right fielder. I don’t know what the Royals are going to do with Francoeur, and frankly, I don’t know what they should do yet. We’ll have some clarity in six weeks; right now, there’s nothing wrong with staying the course.

- You want to know what parity looks like? The Royals are 25-30, and they’ve now fallen a half-game behind the surging White Sox to sit fourth in the AL Central, but a comfortable 7.5 games ahead of the Twins. What you might not realize, though, is that while the Royals have a better record than the Twins, the Twins are the only team in the AL with a worse record than the Royals. The Royals are 13th of 14 teams despite being just 5 games under .500.

Just three teams in the AL (the Indians, Yankees, and Twins) are more than 5 games away from .500 in either direction. The Twins, who are 20 games under .500, are farther away from .500 than the other four teams with a losing record combined.

Which is to say – nothing has been decided yet. The Royals’ playoff hopes, slim as they are, are as dependent on the Indians going forward as on their own performance. If the Indians continue to win 60% of their games, we can close up shop now. But if their hot start was a mirage, well, the Tigers are 29-26, the Sox are 27-31, and the Twins are done.

I’ve been reluctant to buy into the Indians’ hot start all year, and they lost five of six games – by the combined score of 44-12 – before winning their last two. They’re still the favorite in the division; if they play just .500 the rest of the season they’ll win 87 or 88 games, and that seems to be about the Royals’ upside even if everything goes just right. But if they’ve got a little 2003 Royals in them…well, the Royals are still a long shot to make the playoffs. But a long shot is still a shot.

- I’ve given Dayton Moore a lot of crap for how he’s wasted the team’s discretionary free agent dollars over the years, so I feel compelled to point out the following list:

Jeff Francoeur: $2.5 million, .278/.325/.478, 1.4 WAR
Melky Cabrera: $1.25 million, .269/.306/.441, 0.5 WAR
Bruce Chen: $2 million, 3.59 ERA in 43 innings, 0.7 WAR
Jeff Francis: $2 million, 4.46 ERA in 75 innings, 1.0 WAR
Matt Treanor: $850,000, .212/.350/.303, 0.7 WAR

Treanor wasn’t signed as a free agent, but his contract was basically purchased from the Rangers in the dying days of spring training, so close enough.

Those are the only five guys the Royals signed as free agents this winter. All five have performed well for the Royals. (Cabrera’s WAR is that low only because Baseball-Reference hates his defense, rating him 10 runs below average already. He’s bad, but probably not that bad.) The five players are making $8.6 million combined, and none of them have a guaranteed contract for next year.

That’s a pretty good collection of free agent talent, particularly since the Royals were shopping in the bargain bin this off-season. One of the greatest criticisms of Dayton Moore has been his inability to use the free agent market wisely. It’s a deserved criticism, and one off-season doesn’t change that. But at least, for the first time we have a data point that says he can make intelligent free-agent decisions. Five free agents, and not a Horacio Ramirez or Willie Bloomquist – let alone a Jose Guillen or Jason Kendall – among them.

Last year, Moore finally figured out that the only value veteran players had to the Royals were as trade chips, even if they only brought back marginal talent. Scott Podsednik, Jose Guillen, Rick Ankiel, and Kyle Farnsworth were moved for six players, five of whom were organizational talent, and one of whom was Tim Collins. Collins, alone, justified the trades. (Collins is also more valuable than the four players the Royals got for Alberto Callaspo and David DeJesus combined, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

Moore had the right strategy, but his implementation was hamstrung by the fact that none of his veteran players were all that useful. This year, with Betemit, Francoeur, Cabrera (who isn’t a free agent until after next season), Francis, and Chen, the Royals have the opportunity to get some real talent this July. And if Moore does as fine a job signing veterans to fill in holes for next year’s team as he did for this year’s team, we might not be talking about cashing them in at the deadline – we might be talking about how they fit on a playoff roster.

- If you’re a Royals fan, you don’t need statistics to evaluate Alcides Escobar’s defense. Frankly, if you’re a Royals fan, you won’t trust any statistic that doesn’t evaluate Escobar’s defense as Gold Glove-worthy. He has been that good, and that consistent.

Still, it’s good to know that Baseball Info Solutions, who have (in my opinion) the most accurate defensive metric, rate Escobar’s defense as 9 runs above average – in just a third of a season. Fangraphs has Escobar at “only” 5.4 runs above average. Extrapolate those numbers to a full season, and Escobar would save somewhere between 16-27 runs over an average shortstop. Those numbers are absolutely Gold Glove caliber. It’s always nice when the scouts and stats agree.

Unfortunately, he’s still a below-average shortstop overall, simply because his offense has been so execrable. He’s hitting .212/.249/.249. Read that again: .212/.249/.249. He has the lowest OPS of any qualifying shortstop in baseball. He has the lowest OPS and OPS+ of any qualifying shortstop in Royals history – and remember, shortstop has been a gaping hole for this franchise for most of its history.

None of that is to say that he shouldn’t be starting for the Royals today. Even if he is the worst-hitting shortstop in Royals history, he might be the best-fielding shortstop in Royals history – he’s certainly the best fielder I’ve ever seen. And at the age of 24, with his minor-league track record, it’s more likely that he’ll learn how to hit than that he’ll unlearn how to field.

I don’t understand why Ned Yost thinks his development will be hurt by pinch-hitting for him when the Royals are losing in the late innings. (You don’t let a pitcher who’s struggling to succeed in the major leagues pitch in crucial situations, so why wouldn’t you do the same for a hitter?) But I understand why Yost is so reluctant to lose his glove at shortstop. He’s a joy to watch.

- Finally, I’ll end with the sad but expected news that John Lamb is scheduled for Tommy John surgery tomorrow. Obviously, this is a big blow for a guy who some scouts considered to be the best pitching prospect in the system before the season.

But in all honesty, not only am I not that disturbed by this development, I’m almost relieved by it.

I’m not disturbed, because arm injuries are an unavoidable cost of doing business with pitching prospects. The Royals had five starting pitchers on Baseball America’s Top 100 list: Montgomery, Lamb, Duffy, Dwyer, and Odorizzi. Before the season, I fully expected that one of those five would suffer a significant arm injury in 2011. It’s simple math; pitchers get hurt, and expecting five out of five pitchers in their early 20s to stay healthy was unrealistic.

That said, there are arm injuries, and there are arm injuries. This is the former. This isn’t a shoulder problem, which could be a career-ender. Tommy John surgery is significant, it will keep Lamb out for a year, and it certainly affects the Royals’ rotation plans for 2012. But I can’t stress this enough: when it comes to Tommy John surgery, a prospect delayed is (usually) NOT a prospect denied. Roughly 90% of pitchers come back from TJ surgery with the same stuff they had before, and some throw even harder, although those are usually the pitchers that were pitching hurt before their surgery.

And that’s the reason I’m relieved by it – because Lamb’s velocity had been down all season. The Royals were blaming it on a strained lat muscle, and maybe that was the cause, but maybe the cause was that a tendon in his elbow that was hanging by a thread. Lamb, remember, was in a car accident his senior year of high school that resulted in a broken elbow and kept him off the mound – which is how the Royals stole him in the fifth round to begin with. I don’t know that the accident predisposed him to this injury, but if I had had to guess which top Royals’ pitching prospect would have his elbow operated on this season, I would have guessed Lamb.

And if I had to answer which Royals’ pitching prospect I preferred to have required Tommy John surgery, I would have answered Lamb. I don’t mean to be mean or callous – I wouldn’t wish injury on anyone. But of the five pitchers, Lamb is the youngest – he doesn’t turn 21 until July. I subscribe to the strain of thought that says that pitchers are particularly susceptible to arm injuries – the fabled “injury nexus” from the age of 18 until 22 or so. Lamb’s surgery and rehab will keep him off the mound until roughly his 22nd birthday, which will allow the other components of his arm to rest and hopefully minimize his risk of more serious arm problems when he returns. Lamb also doesn’t need to go on the 40-man roster until after the 2012 season, so the Royals don’t need to waste a precious roster spot on a bum arm.

Lamb is also lauded for his makeup and is the son of a scout, so I imagine he will devote himself fully to his rehab, making the likelihood of a full recovery that much greater.

It’s unfortunate that we’ll have to wait to see one of our finest prospects. But I’m confident that he’ll still be worth the wait. And in the meantime, we have a lot of other toys to play with.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Mexicuted.

This was supposed to be the optimistic flip side of my last post. That plan was put in place before Joakim Soria blew the save, and took the loss, in back-to-back games.

Somewhere, at some point, Joakim Soria has somehow morphed into a nightmarish combination of Ambiorix Burgos, Andrew Sisco, Mike MacDougal, Ricky Bottalico and every other failed Royals closer of the last generation.”

Bob Dutton wrote that sentence before today’s game. Yesterday, the Royals lost a game despite having a two-run lead with six outs to go. Today, the Royals lost a game despite a three-run lead with six outs to go – and the opponents didn’t even have to take advantage of extra innings in either game.

So if you’re wondering whether this brings back awful memories of The Worst Bullpen In Major League History, the 1996-2006 Kansas City Royals*…yes. Yes it does.

*: I’ve mentioned this before, but for those of you who are new around here: from 1996 to 2006, the Royals were 172-275 in one-run games, a .385 winning percentage. That is, by far, the worst record in one-run games over an 11-year span for any franchise in major league history. That stretch ended in 2007 – Joakim Soria’s rookie year.

For the better part of a decade, I was terrified any time the Royals went into the ninth with a slim lead. But as unreliable as the Royals’ closer – whoever their closer happened to be at the time – was, it was exceedingly rare for them to blow a save and take the loss in consecutive games. (For one thing, that required the Royals to actually have a late lead in consecutive games, a task the early-21st century Royals were ill-equipped to complete.)

On July 30, 1977, Doug Bird blew the save and took the loss for the Royals, then repeated the feat in the first game of a doubleheader the next day. (This only succeeded in making the Royals mad, as they went 44-12 in their next 56 games.) Amazingly enough, this was the only time in the 20th century that the same Royals pitcher blew a save and took the loss in consecutive games.

It happened again in 2002, when Roberto Hernandez blew back-to-back saves on July 4th and 5th. In 2006, Ambiorix Burgos turned the trick on May 14 and May 16. And in 2009, Juan Cruz blew the save and took the loss on July 17 and July 18 – a particularly neat trick given that he wasn’t even the closer. I was at Kauffman Stadium for those games, and they inspired this post.

Joakim Soria is the fifth pitcher in Royals history to accomplish such an epic fail in consecutive games. He is by far the most unlikely of the five.

It’s worse than that, though, because in Soria’s last three save opportunities – today, yesterday, and last Tuesday against the Orioles – he blew the save and took the loss. It came over a six-game stretch, and Soria actually pitched in a non-save situation during that stretch, but that doesn’t mitigate his accomplishment.

You might think that it’s not unusual for a closer to have a stretch that bad – Brandon League did the same thing just three weeks ago, and in his appearance before that stretch, he came into a tie game and took the loss. But it’s actually incredibly rare.

Ricky Bottalico never took the loss in three straight save opportunities with the Royals.

Roberto Hernandez never took the loss in three straight save opportunities with the Royals.

Neither did Mike MacDougal, or Ambiorix Burgos, or Jeremy Affeldt, or the granddaddy of all closer flops, Mark Davis.

In the history of the Royals, only one other pitcher had ever taken the loss in three straight save opportunities – Curtis Leskanic, on April 14th, 23rd, and 29th, 2004.

And now Soria has done so. But hey, I’m sure his arm is fine.

The tale of Soria’s season is actually divided into two parts. In April, you might remember, stat guys were freaking out about the fact that he wasn’t missing bats – in 11.2 innings, Soria struck out just five batters, while walking six. But with the exception of the meltdown against the White Sox, when the Sox mounted a four-run comeback with two outs and no one in the ninth, the end result was fine – Soria didn’t blow any other leads that month, and the Royals insisted everything was fine.

In May, Soria’s strikeout rate has returned to his career norms and then some. He actually struck out the side today, and in 10.1 innings this month, he has 14 strikeouts. He’s also allowed 17 hits, and 3 homers – one in each of his three blown saves – and 10 runs. And, of course, the Royals have lost four games that they shouldn’t have – his three blown losses, and also the game against the Rangers on May 18, when he came into a tie game in the ninth and allowed a run. Neftali Feliz gave it back in the bottom of the inning – Feliz and Soria seem to be in a competition as to which elite closer can terrify their fan base more, a competition Soria is winning – but the Royals lost the game in extra innings. And no one has any idea what’s going on.

According to Fangraphs, Soria’s average fastball velocity is down about 1.5 mph, but the speed of his secondary pitches is unchanged, and it’s not clear from the data whether the decrease in his velocity is because he can’t throw as hard or because he’s simply throwing more “slow cutters” which are designed to have less velocity. But while his velocity isn’t off much, the results are. Hitters are swinging at fewer pitches (40.3% of his offerings, compared to a career average around 47%.) When they do swing, they’re not missing often – they fail to make contact on only about 15% of their swings, compared to a career average of about 25%.

The data is clear that hitters are no longer being fooled. What isn’t clear is why. The Royals can go on and on about how he’s just having trouble locating his pitches, or finishing his pitches, or scuffing his pitches, or whatever excuse they’ll come up with today. But when a pitcher who has been an elite closer for four years suddenly can’t get anyone out, there’s only one conclusion. This isn’t a court of law: he’s injured until proven healthy. I have no reason to think that Soria’s hurting other than the results on the field. Frankly, those results are enough.

For now, Ned Yost has announced that Soria will take a breather from closing, and Aaron Crow will take over the glamour role. That’s all fine and dandy if the point is winning tomorrow’s game. If the point is to figure out what the hell is wrong with Joakim Soria, this is a massive fail. It takes a massive amount of stubbornness to not acknowledge that such a precipitous decline probably has a structural reason, and shifting Soria into a different role is not going to isolate, let alone fix, the problem. But then, it takes a massive amount of stubbornness for the Royals to have denied there was anything wrong with Soria to this point in the first place.

My last post, about the missed opportunity the Royals had by not trading Robinson Tejeda when they had the chance, is almost comical when you put Tejeda’s situation side-by-side with Soria’s. Soria had a massive amount of trade value this winter. He was widely considered to be one of the five best closers in baseball; only Mariano Rivera was clearly superior. He was 26 years old. He was signed to an insanely club-friendly contract, that paid him just $4 million this year, and $22.75 million from 2012 to 2014. Given his age and contract status, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he had the highest trade value of any reliever in baseball. And the Royals, in trading Zack Greinke, made it clear that they were clearing the decks of established players one last time before the Blue Wave arrived.

We may never know if the Yankees really did offer Jesus Montero for Soria, or if that story was apocryphal. What we do know is that the Yankees panicked and – against their GM’s advice – signed Rafael Soriano to a ridiculous 3-year, $35 million contract that actually gave Soriano the option to walk away after a year. (I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that he won’t exercise that option.) Based on all the circumstantial evidence, I think the Yankees either offered Montero, or would have parted with him had the Royals made the offer.

I’m not going to rip the Royals too harshly for not moving Soria when they had the chance, because on some level I bought into the notion that Soria was different as well. He’s not a max-effort, here’s-my-best-fastball-and-good-luck kind of reliever. (Unlike Neftali Feliz, who pointedly refused to throw anything but his fastball against the Royals. Thanks, Neffi!) While closers, like all relievers, have a shelf-life only slightly longer than mayonnaise, I thought that Soria might be the exception to the rule. Rivera obviously is; Trevor Hoffman was. I still would have traded Soria for Montero if I had the chance, simply because even if he remained dominant, there’s only so much value that you can have when you pitch 65 innings a year. But I wasn’t adamant about it.

(And it must be said that it’s not clear what the Royals would do with Montero. He’s still a long shot to stay behind the plate even briefly in the majors. He’s also having a bit of an off-year offensively in Triple-A. He’s still just 21 and a long-term beast, but if he winds up at first base, he’s been passed by Eric Hosmer. If nothing else, he would make one hell of a trading chip.)

So consider myself, along with the Royals, chastened by what’s happened to Soria. It’s not even the end of May, and he’s already set a career high in blown saves. It’s not even the end of May, and he’s already given up more runs than he did in any of the last three seasons. And as a result, his trade value has dropped from massive to absolute zero in the span of two months.

At this point, it’s not even clear whether the Royals would deign to pick up his option for next year. If they had to decide today, I think they would, and I think they should – aside from the fact that they would be well-served to pay Soria back for signing such a club-friendly contract in the first place, if they turn down the $6 million option for 2012, they also would lose the option on Soria in 2013 and 2014 if he regains his form.

And he might. Just as we don’t have an explanation for why Soria’s pitching has gone south, we don’t have any reason to think he can’t suddenly right the ship. The inestimable Joel Goldberg tweeted earlier that Jeff Montgomery had a similar stretch in his career, and he’s right. On July 10, 1997, Montgomery had a 7.09 ERA, and in 27 innings he had allowed 38 hits, 10 walks, and eight homers.

The rest of the season, Montgomery allowed two earned runs in 33 innings, with just 15 hits and eight walks, and didn’t blow another save all year. That was Montgomery’s last hurrah – his ERA was nearly 5 the following year and nearly 7 in 1999, after which he retired – but Montgomery was 35 years old. Soria is 27.

So yes, if Soria isn’t hurt, I think he’ll pull out of this. Maybe he won’t be the ridiculously effective pitcher he was the last four years – his career ERA coming into the season was 2.01 – but he’ll be effective enough. If he isn’t hurt.

But if he is, then every time he takes the mound just increases the risk that the Soria we knew and loved is gone for good. The downside to an arm injury is such that if there’s even the slightest risk he’s hurt, he ought to be shut down. Call it a mental break if you have to. What’s the downside to giving him a few weeks on the DL, putting him through some imaging tests, then letting him embarrass Triple-A hitters for a week or two before coming back? It might hurt our playoff chances? Please.

If the Royals had an impeccable record of not sending players out onto the field when they were already playing through an injury, I might give them the benefit of the doubt. They don’t. The new training staff seems to be an improvement on the old one, but I’m sorry, as a fan, I need to see more before I sign off on the decision to keep sending Soria out there to take his lumps.

Dayton Moore has been in charge of the organization for almost exactly five years, and every time the organization has made a mistake under his watch – from signing Jose Guillen to destroying Gil Meche’s arm – I hoped that, if nothing else, the Royals would learn from that mistake, so that when the organization was finally in a position to contend, they would avoid the missteps of the past.

The way they’re handling Joakim Soria is evidence that they still need to touch the stove a few more times before they realize that it’s burning their hand. Only this time, with the Royals supposedly as little as a year away from contention, the stakes are a lot higher. If Soria gets his groove back and we’re all looking back at this stretch in wonderment come August, all will be forgiven. If the Royals are simply trading a short DL stint now for a long one later, well, forgiveness will be in awfully short supply.