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Joe Posnanski with this Greinke-bit in his coronation column in the K.C. Star this morning:

The Cy Young Award press tour was not something he wanted to do. He didn’t even answer the Cy Young call because he did not recognize the number on his cell phone.

That comes just hours after Sam Mellinger (also of the Star) relays this bit to us via Twitter:

Zack on whether he’s thought about Cy Young since season ended: “Not really. I’ve been playing this World of Warcraft game.”

The primary question of this blog–if there was one–for about two months was, “seriously, how could you not love Zack Greinke?”  Well, the BBWAA spoke, and color me impressed and pleasantly surprised.  They do love Zack Greinke.

And by record margins as well.  25/28 first place votes for a guy who won only 16 games?  I’d have to think that even if CC Sabathia had won 20 games, Greinke would still have had enough pull to win.

The only question that Zack has to answer next season would be: is the best yet to come?

Hey, you never know.  I’m not going to bet on it, but I’m even less inclined to bet against it.

flickr.com/c h e e s e roc

As bad as the Kansas City Royals have been this season, it could be argued that while everything they needed to go well for them to compete turned out upside down, a few things that would make them feel good about the future turned out alright.  The way Billy Butler and Alberto Callaspo have hit this year is a major positive, and what can you say about Zack Greinke?  The Royals might have the most valuable player in baseball (not to be confused with the Most Valuable Player, the award).

Given the starting pitching and young talent, the Royals are at a point where most organizations would be like, “hey, lets give this a shot next year!”  Well, the Royals are coming off of that mentality right now (100 losses remember), they have to get it together just to avoid a 100 loss season, and while this isn’t the 2008 Mariners in payroll exactly, they sure do look a lot like that team roster-wise.  They increased their payroll by nearly $15 million to about $70 million next offseason.  Tim Dierkes has his Royals’ salary breakdown of the Royals at MLB Trade Rumors.

The Royals don’t really need to be spending more than $70 million dollars to make this team competitive, but for one year at least, they’ll have to do some creative cutting just to hold payroll steady.  It’s not ideal, but after the mess that team leadership created, it’s not a terrible situation either.

You may have heard by now that the Royals extended their General Manager, Dayton Moore, through 2014.  The deal, by and large, was not deserved, but whether it made sense is a much broader question.  We need to get right down to the question at the heart of the matter: is Dayton Moore the right man to lead the Royals into the next decade?

flickr.com/inabeanpod

The worst possible way to answer that question is to look at past moves and weigh the good ones against the bad ones.  No one doubts that the Yuniesky Betancourt deal is going to hurt the Royals into the middle of the 2010 season, or that Gil Meche was for the most part a good use of $55 million dollars that the team had lying around.  If a pitching rotation is the hardest part of a team to build–and it probably is–then Moore has built a strong foundation for a good team.  But if he’s just going to spend the next two offseasons trading some of his pitching depth surplus for mid-level players who (not necessarily in the case linked) can’t really offer much upside, then the balance of Zack Greinke’s contract extension will be spent on a non-contender.

If the shrewd Greinke extension bought Moore some time, the Royals can’t be so naive as to think that Moore has also earned the right to waste that time.  With the money spent on the draft in the past two seasons, the Royals should be plenty able to improve the on-field product and the farm system at the same time, and immediately.  No one expects them to win 90 games next year, but getting back to the 75 win “high-water” mark they reached last year seems like a no-brainer goal.  And, you know, the 2007 Mariners won 88 games, and they did it with Jose Guillen, Willie Bloomquist, and Yuniesky Betancourt none-the-less.  So don’t rule out the rebound, Royals fans.

Of course, neither Bill Bavasi nor Dayton Moore should be making a career out of trying to win games with weak players, which means that as the Royals turn to their farm system to plug a hole in right field and at catcher this offseason, it’s time to pull out all the stops.  The Royals need to find a trade partner for Mark Teahen, and ideally, Alberto Callaspo (though the latter has significantly more value and could help the Royals get back to 75 wins with his bat at a premium position), and then they need to add two outfielders, a second baseman, a bench player or two, and a catcher to compete with Brayan Pena.

All of those holes are position player-related, and that’s the side of the baseball that has given Dayton Moore and his administration fits to date.  Of less importance is the bullpen, which although completely useless to winning games this past season (an ERA of more than 5.00 team-wide), still has a lot of (expensive) talent under contract for 2010, and plenty of potential help there in AAA.  That’s going to have to be on the back-burner for 2010, just a year after an effective bullpen was torn apart and rebuilt around Joakim Soria, resulting in a nearly 2 run increase in team ERA.  So maybe moving it to the back-burner wasn’t such a bad plan.

The Royals, pure and simple, need to add position talent–with either defensive or offensive value–over the next two years through mostly internal means, and Dayton Moore has not shown he can be that guy.  Expensive extension aside, I do not see how the Royals can have full support behind their General Manager if a year from now, these problems are not closer to being fixed.  Team ownership should still have a critical eye to “the Process” as we judge the moves this team makes from this point forward.

flickr.com/Kevin H

Joe Posnanski on baseball’s worst contracts:

2. Jose Guillen (Kansas City Royals). One more year at $12 million. I will admit that I’m grading this one on a curve … the Royals, more than other teams, cannot afford titanic blunders like this one. Everything about this deal baffled from the start. The Royals talked about wanting to get players who get on base — Guillen doesn’t and never has. The Royals talked about wanting players who are leaders — Guillen had played for nine different teams and was suspended for the playoffs by the Angels for inappropriate conduct. The Royals talked about players with good character — Guillen was facing a drug suspension when the Royals signed him (he was given amnesty).

But more than anything: Guillen was almost 32 when the Royals signed him to a three-year, $36 million deal … and he’s precisely the sort of player who starts going wildly downhill at that age. And … so he has. Guillen led the team in RBIs in 2008 despite having a pretty bad year. This year, he has been perhaps the worst everyday player in baseball. His power is gone — .371 slugging percentage — he can’t play the outfield any more and his quick bat (the one thing he always had) has slowed measurably. Funny thing is, I have found him to be quite a likable guy, and he has been brutally honest in his own self-assessment. “If I suck then I suck,” he says. “And I suck.” Probably not worth $36 million, but entertaining still.

The more you have invested in Jose Guillen, the less entertaining he is, trust me.  But what Posnanski says in defense of his likability, I think that’s a good place to build a case for keeping Jose Guillen.

Baseball contracts represent sunk costs to the teams that write them.  They are different from football in this aspect.  Vastly different.  18 million dollars of difference, in Guillen’s case.  But the short version is this: the Royals have no chance to recoup any of that money unless they can find another team willing to pay that contract.  Any chance of that happening ended this year.  So, with respect to the 2010 season the Royals save no money by choosing to not bring Guillen back as they do by choosing to do so.

So that would be a good reason to keep Guillen.  He’s not hurting you to be there, and you’d have to pay him just as much to make him go away, and you’re the Royals, so why not bring him back.  Guillen has never played three consecutive years in his career with the same team, and appears to like it in Kansas City, as much at least as Jose Guillen likes anything, and you’re not considering having him past 2010 anyway, so it makes sense to keep him.

That’s the common argument for.  Except one problem: he most certainly is hurting your team.

At age 33, Jose Guillen is too much of a defensive liability to play anywhere on the field full time.  He’s still got that hose for a right arm that has always been his signature defensive weapon, but even that’s been below average this year because he’s so limited with his range that he can’t get to balls quickly enough to crowhop and get the ball to the proper base in time.  Injuries have played a factor, certainly, but his injury history isn’t likely to improve as he gets older.

Even worse, Guillen’s power has completely disappeared, and along with that, the way pitchers pitch him has completely changed.  No longer is he a guy who you have to be able to throw your offspeed pitches to; pitchers with a strong fastball can get Guillen out rather effortlessly.  He offers nothing with the bat, and offers nothing with the glove.  In other words, he’s worse than worthless and you can’t justify bringing him back at any cost next year.  He has to go.

Both sides of the debate have merit.  But the Royals need to make a decision that could shape the direction of their 2010 team, and they need to be right.

Look at Gary Sheffield: he’s hitting .286/.381/.472 for the New York Mets this year at a cost of 400k after the Detroit Tigers outright released him from their organization.  The Tigers, of course, owe Sheffield nearly $13 million for this season, the last of his deal.  The .472 slugging pct. is right in line with what Sheffield has done the past 4 years, save last year in Detroit when he hit .225/.326/.400.  Sheff’s walk rate has actually decreased from his Detroit days, and the power hasn’t so much reappeared as much as the batting average has just returned to a more expected level.  Sheffield would have been completely overpaid in Detroit at $13 million, but that’s never been the point.  The point is, that money was a sunk cost, Sheffield gets on base, and though he’s not even an average corner outfielder at this point in his career, Fangraphs estimates his value to the Mets at about $2.9 million above replacement.  If Sheffield was still on the Tigers, he would be their second most valuable outfielder, and in a bit of irony, would be a good excuse to not give Magglio Ordonez the opportunity to have his $18 million option vest later this year based on playing time.

Guillen’s situation is not nearly as clear cut.  He was walking more often than ever before this year, but even if his batting average and consequent slugging percentage were to rebound, Guillen could have his best offensive year as a Royal at age 34.  But he’d probably fight injuries the whole way, he’d offer no value defensively, and back to the Sheffield comparison for a second, Gary never lost the ability to hit a fastball.  In that down year in 2008, he just had an abnormally rough year against the breaking ball.  Since joining the Royals, Guillen has not been a good fastball hitter, an anomaly from the rest of his career.  Unless he rediscovers the ability to hit fastballs, it’s hart to see any rebound as a hitter for Guillen.

I think the key to this decision for the Royals is whether or not they can first replace Guillen in right field.  As a part time player, Guillen’s improving walk rate can be viewed as a positive, and he’s shown the ability to post an on base percentage in the .330-.350 range in the past, which is valuable to the Royals.  But it’s different if the Royals feel like they need to put Guillen in the field to justify his value.  If they look at their roster, and don’t see where he fits in on their bench, it’s probably better to cut bait right now.  If you don’t let him out into the field but once in a blue moon, however, he doesn’t cost you runs in the field, and then the Royals might be able to get a positive value hitter at the DH position.  Maybe.

A lot of this depends on their decision to bring back Mike Jacobs, who is still under team control, but could cost in the $3 million vicinity.  Without Jacobs, there’s probably a spot on the bench for Jose Guillen.  Jacobs would be “cheaper” than Guillen, and by a lot, but he also represents money that the tight-budgeted Royals are not yet on the hook for.  Dropping a player who does nothing but hit pop ups and fly balls is an easy way to reduce the payroll.  On the other hand, he has more upside than Guillen as a hitter, although, probably not worth a marginal $3 million dollars.  Jacobs’ bat might not be as good as Guillen’s currently, but it’s expected that he might post another .500 slugging season in his career whereas Guillen is probably done with that type of production.

But Guillen is a right-handed bat, his contract is already paid, and the Royals have only left handed hitters to bring up next year (save for a potential Guillen replacement, Jordan Parraz).  So given the situations surrounding this contract, it’s not all that hard to envision a situation where Guillen does play out his contract with the Royals.  But as a franchise that’s trying to get on the right track, it’s important that they carefully consider all their options, and if they can find a cost effective solution that offers better performance than Guillen, that they make sure to take advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself.

Yes, even if that means that another AL Central team will cut an eight figure check to a player no longer on the roster.

flickr.com/Keith Allison

It’s probably too early to start this talk, but if I don’t do it now, someone is going to beat me to it.

It’s conceivable that I have a significant bias here, advocating for my favorite baseball player to win the most prestigious award a pitcher can win.  It’s probably not fair to the other candidates, because I’m unlikely to change my opinion barring something totally improbable in the last two months.  You could say that I’m writing with a slant here.

But you can’t say that I’m wrong.

For one thing, this isn’t a particularly strong AL Cy Young race, despite Zack Greinke’s historic awesomeness.  His only legitimate competition is Roy Halladay, and there’s still an off chance that Halladay could wind up in the NL before the end of the day tomorrow.

Last year, I advocated for Halladay to win the Cy Young over Cliff Lee even though Lee had a slightly better ERA.  But Halladay had the higher strikeout rate, and he pitched in 23 more innings.  In my eyes, I’ll take a pitchers who records more total outs in a close race over a guy with a slightly better ERA.

This applies historically as well.  The last Royal to lead the AL in ERA did so by a significant margin: Kevin Appier in 1993.  However, he threw about twenty fewer innings with a higher WHIP and a middling strikeout rate, and finished behind Roger McDowell and Randy Johnson, and rightly so.

Well, as of this moment, Greinke has thrown just as many innings as Roy Halladay has, and that ERA race isn’t all that close.  Greinke leads the AL by more than half a run, and barring a string of three or more “blown” quality starts, will easily finish the season with the AL’s lead in ERA.  The fact that Greinke’s doing what he is with one of the worst defenses in MLB history behind him, a defense that arguably shortens every start by an inning or two simply by misplaying 3 or 4 balls a start, is remarkable.

Put it a different way, here’s a list of all active players who have ever posted a full-season ERA better than Zack Greinke current 2.08 mark (which, as previously menti0ned is somewhat inflated by a bad defense):

Pedro Martinez

And, well, it’s a pretty short list.

There are a few other pitchers in the AL who could get themselves into the Cy Young discussion by finishing strong: Josh Beckett, Edwin Jackson, Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia, Jarrod Washburn, Jered Weaver all have an outside shot.

But the distance of all the non-Roy Halladay pitchers speaks more to just how much of a race this really isn’t right now.

The one blemish against Greinke is his 10-6 record: he may very well only win 15 games.  If Zack Greinke winds up with a 15-9 record and a 2.20 ERA, and the Royals end up 15-18 in his 33 starts, there will be some writers who will not vote for him for Cy Young.  It’s going to happen, might as well prepare yourself.  They’ll look at arguably the greatest pitching season in the last ten years, and ask, rhetorically, if Greinke really did enough?

This same writer will then cast his vote for a player with one or two more wins, and an ERA just south of 3.00.  That may very well be Roy Halladay.  If Halladay pitches well enough to be the clear cut second best AL pitcher in 2008, he’ll get the Cy Young award.  Nevermind that the award was designed for the single most dominant pitcher in the league in any given year.  Greinke is going to lose some votes because he had the audacity to sign with the Royals, because he knew what he was getting into, and because, if he had just been a little better than simply the best, he could have won 20 games.

Plenty of others will give Greinke the nod for consistently wowing us over the course of the year.  9 out of 10 weeks, Greinke goes out and does the amazing, and whether or not you score off him is entirely dependant on your ability (luck) to string your hits together in one inning.

In no uncertain terms, Greinke has been, to this point, the most valuable player in the AL this year.  It’s a testament to his dominance that he’s still in the discussion for the Cy Young, because pretty much any other pitcher in the league would be pushing 15 losses with the lack of run support and defensive support he gets every single start.  Unquestionably, if any pitcher has ever truly deserved the Cy Young, then Greinke needs this honor this year.

Today, I got a chance to see Royals prospect Sam Runion, a 20 year old RHP, start for the Burlington Bees against the West Michigan Whitecaps.  What follows is an incredibly amateur scouting report based on his performance.

First, though, a story.  Sam Runion was a 2007 2nd round draft pick of the Royals out of A.C. Reynolds High School in Asheville, North Carolina.  He signed shortly thereafter, and began his professional career in rookie ball in Arizona.  A classic control pitcher with a good fastball, Runion played very well out of the gate in 2007, striking out 9 batters per 9 innings in Arizona.

He began the 2008 season playing near his home, with the Burlington (NC) Royals, dropped his ERA to 3.35 in 10 starts which, combined with his draft position and age, earned him prospect status.

Promoted to Burlington in the middle of the 2008 season Runion was expected to continue to flourish, but his ERA has skyrocketed while his peripherals have fallen apart completely.  Runion, who was almost unhittable in Burlington, saw a massive increase in his hit and home run rate, but the decline in his strikeout rate has been most devastating.  Returning to Burlington in 2009, Runion entered today with a 6.30 ERA in 94.1 innings.

The West Michigan Whitecaps (Detroit Tigers affiliate) are the class of the midwest league, and would prove to be Runion’s biggest challenge of the season.  Runion started out in the first inning demonstrating a spectacular range of speeds, throwing 4 different pitches which ranged from an 88-90 mph fastball to a 56-59 mph slow (knuckle?) curve.  He threw both a changeup in the upper 70’s, and some sort of a breaking ball in the mid to low 70’s that might have been a power curve, a slider, a slurve, or something similar.

Before Runion had his second out, he had already committed a fielding error, and had given up a two run homer to put the Whitecaps up 3-0.  The home run pitch was that extremely slow curve that he simply left up in the zone out over the plate, and WM DH Billy Nowlin hit it at least 430 feet, if not further.

True to the scouting reports I’ve read on him, Runion does not often get too far behind in the count.  He struggled with his control a little bit in the first inning, throwing one ball to the backstop, and getting behind 2-0 at times, but Runion is good at throwing his fastball and his changeup for first pitch strikes.  He’s also appeared to be an incredibly hittable pitcher early in the count.  But as Runion started to work some hitters over, he got ahead 0-2, or 1-2, and appeared to be quite good at getting groundballs to get him out of innings.

The floodgates would open once again on him in the 5th inning, and at this point, I thought he was relying too heavily on his fastball, and the top five hitters in the order for the Whitecaps were just taking him to the warning track on every at bat.  They did not get one out of the park after the first inning, but this appears to be a trend with Runion: when he tires, he leaves his fastball out over the plate, and if he gets it up in the zone, the ball will travel.

Runion also appears to be a very poor defender even for a pitcher.  He was charged with an error, that really was a misplayed ball by the first basemen (who left his zone to cut off a 3 hopper), forcing Runion to hustle over to the bag, and field a 1-hopped throw while moving, which did not happen, and cost the Bees a free base.  Later in the game though, WM CF Brent Wyatt, a fine player in his own right, layed a bunt down the third base line, and it was a play that probably should have been made.  Runion, however, didn’t come charging off the mound, and his throw to first was consequently late.

Overall, Runion compiled a line of 6 IP, 7 ER, 2 K, 2 BB, and the lone homer, against a team much better than his own.  Even a good performance by Runion might not have changed the outcome of this one, but I came away thinking that I just didn’t see any sort of  “out” pitch the whole outing, and this would explain Runion’s terrible strikeout rate.  I do think he might have a future if he can develop a strong ground ball tendency: he can improve his walk rate by working with his fastball and his changeup more exclusively (the breaking stuff simply fooled no one), but without the ability to get ground ball outs, Runion might not ever make it as far as double-A.

For Royals GM Dayton Moore, the calling into question of Runion’s prospect status has to be disheartening.  If nothing else, Moore will be measured by how he does with his early round picks, and while players like Johnny Giovatella, Eric Hosmer, Michael Montgomery, and Mike Moustakas are moving through the system according to plan, Moore’s drafting resume would look a lot better if Runion bounces back next year, and rights himself on the path to the big leagues.  I think this could still happen, but he’s going to have to simply his repitoire to make the next step.

I have long despised the variable of defensive positioning in determining a hitter’s value.  Now, I’m well aware that the average first baseman will outhit the average middle infielder in any given year.   I also realize that you can’t put 5 overweight average hitting first basemen in your everyday lineup every day and expect to win games.  That’s elementary stuff, which, I think misses the point.

My problem with positional baselines have to do with their disregard to the quality of individual defensive play.  Conventional positional baselines adjust the offensive statistics of a defensive whiz such as Cesar Izturis, and a glove-butcher like Michael Young (when he played SS) at the same level.  There’s a large defensive difference between Elvus Andrus and Yuniesky Betancourt, but they are both given the offensive baseline of “shortstop”.

My logic is as follows:  players who post severely below average defensive numbers are likely playing out of position, whether or not their team realizes it.  Adjusting offensive numbers for the fact that their defensive value comes at a premium is pointless if you could be getting the defensive production from anyone on your roster, including the pitchers.

You could do this with any statistic that uses positional baselines, but I’m going to use VORP because it’s easy to understand (offensive runs above replacement level) and it doesn’t factor in any defensive value outside of the position played.  Take the curious case of the Kansas City Royals.  If we ranked their best hitters as rated by VORP, among their positional lines, they look something like this:

• 2nd Baseman Alberto Callaspo – ranked 10th (17.9)
• 3rd Baseman Mark Teahen – ranked 13th (19.5)
• Shortstop Willie Bloomquist – ranked 17th (7.5)
• Catcher Miguel Olivo – ranked 19th (5.9)
• 1st Baseman Billy Butler – ranked 20th (9.2)
• Centerfielder Coco Crisp – (still) ranked 30th (4.3) [out for season]

With the exception of Butler at first base (which I’ll get to in a second), those are all positive contributions from players at premium defensive positions.  The Royals rank 30th in the MLB in VORP because of a lot of sub-replacement performances at SS, but mostly because they are getting penalized for not having productive corner outfielders and DH’s in the system.

By far, those are the positions at which VORP shows the highest amount of variance, and the Royals don’t have a hitter among the top 30 at either outfield spot, nor do they have a DH ranked in the top 16.

VORP’s solution to make the Royals a league average offense–given the list above–is to acquire/develop two or three league-average hitters at non-premium defensive positions.  1) This is an expensive/long-term solution, 2) the Royals are going to look worse than this in VORP at the end of the season, despite likely offensive improvement, and 3) this completely ignores why the Kansas City Royals are a bad baseball team.

The Royals have an organizational logjam at first base.  Billy Butler is the best defender of the bunch, which is damning to all involved.  Mike Jacobs can barely be considered a defensive player at all, he’s arguably out of position at first base, and can’t remotely be considered for any other position.  Kila Kia’ahue is tearing up triple-A for the second consecutive year, but he’s another guy who profiles best as a DH.  Down the road, 19 year old prospect Eric Hosmer figures to be this teams first baseman/power threat, and he might be athletic enough to play a corner outfield spot, but for right now, is strictly a first baseman.

It’s simply not true that any of those players could actually gain value by moving to the corner outfield, however, this is exactly what defensive baselines suggest.  It seems like a simple solution: just slide Alberto Callaspo over to SS, DFA Jose Guillen, move Billy Butler to Right Field, call up Kila to play first base, wham, you have a good baseball team, or at least one that produces more runs above replacement than it currently does.  Uh, not exactly.

The easiest and cheapest way for the Royals to improve is to work on the defense: move players to LESS demanding defensive positions.  You could get better contribution from Alberto Callaspo at third base*, from Willie Bloomquist at second base, from John Buck or Brayan Pena in the outfield or at DH, and from Mark Teahen in the outfield.

*-Of course, there’s a logjam at third base as well.  It’s just a poorly constructed organization.

flickr.com/Baseball player photos

This is more or less what the (admittedly flawed) Yuniesky Betancourt trade was about.  It allows the Royals to get more value out of their existing players.  The acquisition of Coco Crisp allowed the Royals to get more value out of David DeJesus.  The emergence of Callaspo allowed the Royals to get more value out of Mark Teahen and Willie Bloomquist.  The development of Miguel Olivo and Billy Butler’s defense and power helps out the value of Brayan Pena and Mike Jacobs.

Defensive baselines simply obscure this effect because they see the team moving offensive players with value to positions where their offensive value gets mitigated.  But in reality, the offensive value of the player has not changed.  He’s simply a more valuable defender.

The assumptions made by positional baselines assume that if a team is lacking in production at positions where the baselines affect the production negatively, those positions can be replaced externally.  This is sometimes true, but often, a fallacy.  And it affects the very thing that positional value sets out to measure.

The Kansas City Royals are, pending today’s result, 0-5 against the Tampa Bay Rays this season.  That’s not all that surprising, in itself.  But what if I told you that, the Royals led three of those games at the end of seven innings?

The Royals have taken one run leads into each of the last three matchups with the reigning AL Champs, and they’ve blown saves all three times.  Most significantly, they haven’t been able to get the game to closer Joakim Soria, who was available to pitch in all three games.

Let’s assume that Soriawould have started the ninth inning in any situation where the team had a lead.  That might have been a stretch in the first game (June 3), becuase he would have pitched back to back days after coming off the DL.  It’s reasonable to expect that from the highest payed player in the bullpen, two consecutive pitching days, but you could make an argument that it’s not worth the potential risk.

Anyway, how often should a team be expected to get to the ninthinning witha lead when taking a one run lead into the eighth?  At least two out of three times is reasonable, no, the status quo.  It’s expected that most games that get that far should be converted into saves by the closer.  But you could argue that the Royals should actually be better than the status quo given the tool of Joakim Soria in the bullpen.

Blame for the failures of the team in this situation falls on both the players who are actually blowing the save (Jamey Wright, Juan Cruz, John Bale), but also on gross bullpen mismanagement by Royals manager Trey Hillman.  In defense of Hillman, he’s really got only three types of setup men to rely on: those who are posting out of character high home run rates, and those who are posting high home run rates that are perfectly in character, and those who walk so many batters that they can’t possibly be considered in these setup situations.

So, we’ve established that Hillman has his hands tied.  But we also know that if the problem is getting the game to Soria, the manager can choose to stretch his best reliever up to two innings to convert these close losses into wins.  It’s at least the logical conclusion for trying to convert those close games into wins.

Possible reasons that would prevent the manager from stretching his closer to a multi-inning role include the fact that it could limit options for pitching him in consecutive days, the need the establish a trust in the other members of his bullpen, and the decision to mitigate the risk of injury, choosing instead to pitch the player in a very standard role.  The motif that connects all these reasons: fear.

Fear of losing one’s job, of mortgaging the future for a win here or there, of losing the trust of the rest of the bullpen, of potentially limiting his options tomorrow.  Fear of failure, even if the right decision is made.

All those are legitimate reasons to avoid stretching your best reliever to his limits in order to convert those blown saves into saves.  But, in my opinion, they are also fears that are ignored by the best managers.  The best realize that their actions may have long term consequences, and make the decision in the best interest of the team anyway.  Trey Hillman may very well be treating 2009 as a lost season for his Royals, but if in a meaningless season, he’s too fearful of potential consequences to make the right decision, why would he be more likely to make the best decision in a situation with more scrutiny?

Instead of three potential wins, the Royals lost three games, and more embarrassingly, Soria did not pitch in any of them.  Not even in mop up.  Revisionist history might be screwing the Royals over here, and there’s nothing to suggest that if they once again fail to make the right decision, that the much-maligned bullpen won’t get it to Soria this time.  Anything can happen in baseball.

As I write this, the Royals currently lead the Rays by a score of 3-2 in the middle of the 7th inning.  It’s likely that the team, once again, will take a one-run lead into the eighth inning against the Rays for a 4th straight game.  And it’s probable that if they don’t learn from their past mistakes, they will once again lose to the Rays.  Ironically, it’s a different kind of fear that might save them: the fear of making the same mistake three days in a row.

But the damage has already been done.  The Royals play every game on the margins, and can not afford to blow as many saves as they do.  They need to treat every late inning lead like they are protecting it in the World Series, and only then will the team be properly managed.

UPDATED:  0-6.  Still no Soria.  What a crappy team.

It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that the trade of Yuniesky Betancourt from the Mariners to the Royals resulted in more decisive and significant local backlash than any other trade of the past two years.  But while the fundamental mistakes on the Royals’ end, specifically GM Dayton Moore were numerous, they weren’t as epic at length as they were at first glance.

Quoth Rany Jazayerli:

Trading for Yuniesky Betancourt didn’t have to be such a disaster. I see the Royals’ line of thinking here: Betancourt is a phenomenally talented player who might benefit from a change of scenery, and his price has never been lower. The fundamental mistake the Royals made was that they didn’t appreciate just how low Betancourt’s stock had fallen. If they had traded Saito alone – and made the Mariners pick up $6 million instead of just $3 million – this would have been a perfectly reasonable trade. And judging from the condolences I received after the team from front office types – no, not anyone who used to work at Baseball Prospectus – they still would have had the best offer on the table.

As a Redskins fan, I could explain to you in-depth how hard it is for executives to learn how to balance ones perception of value with another.  I’ve watched a football team miss on a players perceived value by up to two or three rounds in compensation seemingly year after year.  A 2nd rounder for Jason Taylor.  A third rounder for T.J. Duckett. A first and a third rounder for Lav Coles.

I mean, hell, just this year the K.C. Royals traded fallen/flatlining pitching prospect Tyler Lumsden for OF Jordan Parraz, a legitimate hitter in the low minors.  The point is: the issue with reconciling scouting perceptions of players, specifically potential acquisitions, with reality is not a trait found to be inherently lacking in bad personnel people.  It’s a legitimately difficult part of the job, perhaps the most difficult part.

Clearly though, as Rany points out, this is what occurred in K.C. this week.  The fact that Dayton Moore thinks (thought briefly?) that Betancourt can be a good player, specifically on defense, matters far less than his inability to realize that the Mariners (who just had a regime change last year, btw), did not think that he could be a good player.  If you have reason to believe a player is more valuable than his team thinks he is, don’t let any amount of statistical analysis stop you from pulling the trigger.  But, certainly, don’t give up MORE than they think he’s worth.

Ultimately though, Dayton Moore is not going to lose his job over a single gamble in the middle of a lost baseball season for a franchise that has enjoyed nothing but lost baseball seasons since the early 1990’s.  The worst possible outcome of this trade would pretty much just be the status quo for the Royals.  I mean, yes, it would hinder the team from getting better in the short-term, but few except die-hard Royals fans would actually notice.

The losers, in all of this, are those Royals fans.  The reason the mainstream media didn’t even bat an eye at this trade is just that: no one cares about the Kansas City Royals.  So the team makes a move that, on the surface, reeks of ignorance if not incompetence; the Mariners are winners, everyone moves on with their lives.  The local backlash, as strong as it is, measures about a 1.3 on the national sports Richter scale.  A few blogs ponder some possible motives for the trade, and then, that’s it, people move on.

Royals fans get to live out this monstrosity, as they follow the team throughout the rest of the summer, into next year, and thanks to arrogance, likely into 2011.  The Mariners, as an organization, are winners, the Royals subsidize the losing to their fans, and nothing is really wrong in the baseball world.

Happy that I sat and watched the final 7 innings of the MLB all-star game. I was pulling for the AL most of the way, because, well, Zack Greinke is awesome.

Zack had a 10 pitch 4th inning, so he contributed to the overall shortness of the game. He struck out David Wright looking, and then Shane Victorino on a classic slider. It was epic.

After Roy Halladay struggled to keep the NL off the board for two innings, you’d think there would be some outcry in the media that perhaps Joe Maddon didn’t do right by starting him over Greinke, but alas, second guessing appears to be used only in situations more trivial than these.