#PityGraph

Jake Odorizzi. I have a nerdy and obsessive habit of writing letters to Major League baseball players and hoping they sign autographs on the cards I enclose. When I send these I do multiple things to prep the cards and stack the odds in my favor in any way to get the card back with the athlete’s autograph on it. I am doing the Linus project. My little brother, Linus, is growing up a baseball fan, because he lives under the same roof that I do. He loves watching the MLB games and to look at the autographs that I get when I go to games. Linus is too little to take care of cards, so I am going to have as many athletes sign autographs, and personalize them “To Linus”. I will put a book together and give them to him when he is older.

I ask them to do this in a short, maybe two or three sentence letter, asking for an autograph and a personalization. I wrote to Jake Odorizzi this evening. Instead of a small letter, I wrote an essay to Jake Odorizzi. I apologized to him for the Royal’s front office incompetence. As we are weaned out of the James Shields era, we look back onto what brought it on.

Royals give:

Wil Myers (hurt 2014)

Jake Odorizzi (7-9,4.09 ERA, 1.346 WHIP)

Mike Montgomery (bust)

Patrick Leonard (lottery ticket, still too early to tell.)

Rays give;

James Shields (10-6, 3.43 ERA, 1.246 WHIP)

Wade Davis (Reliever Jesus)

So, purely looking at 2014, The Royals won this trade. Lets look past that for a minute

Royals give;

Wil Myers (Unless a fluke, supposed to average 21 bombs while slugging .432)

Jake Odorizzi (2 starter with upside)

Patrick Leonard (Lottery ticket)

Rays give;

Wade Davis (reliever Jesus)

So, a starting outfielder a 2 starter, and maybe more, for a good reliever. Seems legit.

At least the reliever is REALLY good.

James Shields has been their best pitcher while he was in Kansas City, but Jake Odorizzi will be better than James Shields, at least historically speaking.

James Shields at age 24; 6-8, 4.84 ERA, 1.463 WHIP

Jake Odorizzi at age 24;  7-9, 4.09 ERA, 1.346 WHIP

Using the same progression, The Royals traded future James Shields for present James Shields.....

Except they threw in that Myers guy.

Latin America

As we all know, Kansas City has carried a dismal baseball franchise since 1985. But as spring training rolls around, we have to again acknowledge how well the Royals have done in the Latin American talent market.

Everyone who pays very much attention to the Royals will directly turn there heads up to the sky and wink at their mental image of Salvador Perez, the Royals’ up and coming catcher. The Royals, though, have made some fantastic signings from Latin America. There are also some tremendous advantages to scouting in Latin America. Some of those will follow.

When you are hunting the streets of some small town in the midwest looking for the high school stadium to try to find the next Hank Aaron, you have to wait until he is 18. When you go to Latin America to try to find the future face of your franchise, the face can be younger. You can sign a 16 year old to a major league contract. So your Latin Mike Trout is more likely to begin his career just as Mike Trout did, under the age of 20.

If there is a tremendous amount of talent in some random high school in America, you probably wouldn’t be the only one to see it. Chances are, if he really is the next Ted Williams, there will be you and 29 other major league scouts sitting in the stands. The more scouts, the more money. No matter how humble a high school kid is, he will go to the highest bidder, which is generally a lot of money. In Latin America, roughly 28% of the people are in poverty. More will go for smaller amounts of money. This allows small market teams, like the Royals, to upgrade their minor league talent.

It isn’t just the Royals that do this though. On Opening Day 2012, 27.3 percent of players on Major League rosters were Latino. Teams are rightly buying into this gigantic talent base, and the Royals are very good at identifying talent in Latin America. This is why we get to have that mental image of Salvador Perez winking at us. The Major Leagues, and the Royals, have been, and will be, greatly enhanced by this pool of talent staring at us in the face. We would be idiots to ignore it.

Santastic

I hope you can forgive a bit of rambling in this article, as a I am not even in high school yet. My humor revolves mostly around things like ASDFmovie, and Gangnam Style. My friends and I play violent games like tennis, where one slaps the others hand and vise-versa until one of the players wimps out. Our sleepovers revolve mainly around games like Dead Island, Left 4 Dead, and MLB 2K12. (The last one is just me and my best friend) In the past Dayton Moore has made decisions like we might at 2:00 in the morning when we are playing 2K12, and the case of Diet Code Red Mountain Dew (I have type 1 Diabetes, so we drink diet) is nearly drained. As I am currently typing this, it is very late on a Saturday night, and I have ear-buds in, a laptop on the top of my lap, and the TV tuned in the MLB Network’s “Countdown, Top 25 Comebacks of All Time” But back to the point, Dayton Moore has made some pretty awful decisions since the blind squirrel that is the Kansas City Royals found an acorn in the return for Zack Greinke, but I will break that trade down in another article. Ervin Santana is a Kansas City Royal. It even feels good to say. It is not even the best case scenario, but is progress, and it is better that the previous news rush that Chris Volstad is a Royal. My hope with that pick up is that they hope they can fix him, and if they can’t, such as life. They cut him and pay him nothing. Let’s attempt to avoid that topic though. Santana was absolutely horrific this past season, posting a 5.16 ERA, -1.6 WAR, and a 1.27 WHIP, all while being paid 11.2 million dollars, Santana did though put up 178.0 innings in 2012. Even though there are currently 8 starters on the Royals depth chart, Santana is one of them. Some writers have been complaining that Moore should have gone after Dan Haren. Luke Hochevar was MORE horrific though, posting an ERA, WAR, and WHIP (All previous listed stats other than innings and salary) worse than Santana. I am hoping the Royals non-tender Hoch, but is highly unlikely. Just Rany predicted, Moore acted early. I hope he acted effectively. He proved he is willing to spend money. Gil Meche was the last time Moore spent legit money on a starter, spending 12 (The option that they picked up on Santana was 13 million, but the Angels also gave Kansas City a million) million on Santana after, well, I am just assuming here, the Angels completely lost hope in him. Every few years he seems to have some kind of collapse, but I bet the Royals will only have him for 1 year. If you have been especially attentive while you have been reading this, then you have probably learned a lot. How strange I am. A great analogy about Dayton Moore’s decision making, and how this is a step in the right direction, and a decent sized one.

Getting Creative

I wrote this for school and we were not allowed to do any research, hence the lack of numbers. Comment if you would like me to revise it and add numbers

The Kansas City Royals pitching staff was horrific this past season, with Luke Hochevar and his 5.39 ERA, and Jonathan Sanchez giving up 7 runs in 1 1/3 innings to the Mariners. I have a proposition, which will hopefully  make the Royals 2013 season the first memorable one since 1985. This would be an anomaly, as the Royals have the longest playoff drought in any professional sport since fifteen years before I was born. Being a Royals fan is difficult, as you have to get accustomed to losing. But if Dayton Moore, the Royals General Manager, would consider these ideas, the Royals may win what is expected to be the worst division in baseball in 2013.

The Royals need starting pitching.  Anibal Sanchez is their best option. Sanchez started the 2012 season with the Miami Marlins, who traded him to the Detroit Tigers at the trading deadline. He struggled out of the gate, but picked it up and had a fantastic end of the season. His great performance spilled into the postseason, where he dominated the Oakland A’s and the New York Yankees. He makes the start for game 3 of the World Series, which, as I am writing this, has not occurred yet. Sanchez appears to be the best realistic option, as a Zack Greinke reunion seems to be unlikely.

Speaking of Greinke, if the Royals were to get him, I believe that it would require them to get creative. I think that I can assume you do not know who Mike Sweeney is. He was a first baseman for the Royals before he became injury plagued. The player is not the comparison, his contract is. I was reading a Rany Jazayerli article (a blogger and founder of Baseball Prosepectus) the other day, and he presented the idea of taking the unique clause out of Sweeney’s deal, that says the Royals cannot be bad. Let me explain- the clause says that if the Royals don’t finish over .500 (81-81) in 2003 or 2004, Sweeney can walk away. In the first year of his contract, (2003) the Royals won 83 games. The contract worked, as it kept what was at the time one of the best hitters in the American League in Kansas City. Greinke left Kansas City because he wanted to win, if the Royals give him this clause, if he does not win, he gets to leave.

Dayton Moore claims that he would like to pick up Kyle Lohse. I share another theory with Rany, and that is Moore should stay away from Kyle Lohse. Lohse currently plays for my beloved Cardinals, but he is a free agent this offseason. I have looked at all of Lohse’s splits, (stats) and all of them appear to say that he relies heavily on the Cardinals good defense, and luck. Since 1985, Kansas City is where luck keels over, balls up, and dies. Kansas City has a below average defense. (as a team). Lohse is going to get paid a substantial amount more than Sanchez, and Sanchez has appeared to be better over the last few seasons.


I hope that you have been able to draw a fair amount from this article, but if one thing could stick with you, it would be this; The Kansas City Royals need starting pitching, and Anibal Sanchez seems to be the answer. I am not saying that the Royals will be the best team in baseball, I am just saying that they might be competent, and competent is all that we are asking.

Rambling with large words

My backyard has two bare spots.  One, where I stand, is longer than wide.  Where Carson stands, the grass is dead over a fifteen by twenty foot area, trampled into bare dirt by the pursuit of innumerable grounders.  We have always played baseball.  When Carson was small, we would adjourn to the basement with his MLB sponsored plastic bat, and he would hit hundreds of pitches with the soft plastic balls culled from his ball pit.  His first full sentence was, “hit by pitch, take your base.”  His bedroom is decorated by a series of shelves, custom-built by his great-grandfather, which exactly replicate the number of teams in the major league divisions.  He has a hat from each team, which he shuffles on the shelves each morning to reflect the current standings.  We are not happy that the Astros are moving leagues.  Those are our baseball bona fides, as they are.  The point is not to impress you.  I am fairly certain that you aren’t reading.

The point is that I thought about all of these things when I read Sam Mellinger’s kind of column reprinting a reader letter disclaiming allegiance to the Royals and Chiefs.  My first reaction, based on the proportion of capitalized letters, was that the reader was primarily a Chiefs fan.  The most severe complaints, if one measures in the upper case, concern the quarterback position.  Perhaps that assessment is uncharitable.  But complaining about the Royals is much like complaining about gravity.  The Royals being a crappy baseball team is really just the natural order of things.  Acting like you are surprised or dismayed about it is a bit disingenuous if you have been paying a modicum of attention over the period of years that postdates 1985.  Now seems like an extraordinarily odd time to abandon the local baseball franchise, considering any reasonable estimate would have to concede a fairly substantial improvement from the days of Mark Redman, All-Star.

The better point is to recognize a profound debt of thanks to writers like Rany Jazayerli and Michael Engel who cemented how our family experiences baseball.  We have always had the zen rhythm of catch in the backyard.  But with the vernacular of BABIP and WAR we have a new and improved way to complain and obsess and compare and laugh and think.  Largely about Jeff Francoeur.  Carson’s gifted presentation is about the market inefficiency of free-market starting pitching.  This is the new iteration of the hoary myth that baseball bonds parents and their children in ways that little else can.  But I believe it.  Thanks, Rany.  And thanks, Michael.  Though, full disclosure, Michael helps coach our U12 baseball team.  Though we would appreciate it if he showed up a little more for practice.

2013?

On July 10, 2012, the world turned their heads toward Kansas City while they hosted the All-Star game. Prince Fielder of the Detroit Tigers won the Home Run Derby, and what is the definition of a dumpster fire trade was capitalized. Yes, former Royal, Melky Cabrera won the All-Star game MVP, while still in the lead for the NL batting title. And you have to think that the Royals got a halfway decent return for the Giants star, and then you remember, that it is the Royals, the only team in baseball to spend an additional 24MM for 19 points of win %, and the only team in baseball with a scouting director for a GM. The Kansas City Royals who two months ago traded the best player in baseball for a starting pitcher with an ERA of 7.76. Today however, they traded a disgraced PED user for their only solid starter. Melky Cabrera’s batting average before his stats magically took a bump, and after;

Before: .262/.324/.370
Average HR/RBI’s per year: 8/54

After: .326/.365/.493
Average HR/RBI’s per year: 15/74

That is just not right. In the process the Royals also secured Jeff Francoeur to a 2 year 16MM extension. Jeff Francoeur has -3.0 WAR this year. So great job Dayton Moore! You did it again, but at least Frenchy isn’t here on a work visa, and he doesn’t get hit in the back with fly balls. But even blind squirrels find an acorn from time to time, and out of the ashes of what could be contemplated as the worst trade in MLB history, came Jeremy Guthrie. A man who’s ERA was 5.83 points higher at Coors Field than it was on the road.  Jeremy Guthrie, who was the Baltimore Orioles #1 starter for a matter of years, Jeremy Guthrie, who is better than Luke Hochevar. Yes, the Luke Hochevar that was selected ahead of Evan Longoria, Clayton Kershaw, Tim Lincecum, and Ian Kennedy. The Luke Hochevar whose career low in ERA is 4.68, The Luke Hochevar who either has “great stuff” is “tipping his pitches” or is “throwing the cutter to much” or maybe he just “throws too many pitches” (yes, he throws too many pitches in a Royals uniform).  Ya, THAT Luke Hochevar. Whatever the case may be, Hochevar is getting ready to pass Kyle Davies for the all time high ERA with at least 120 starts. And a couple of weeks ago Dayton Moore and Ned Yost hosted a press conference about why exactly they are undoubtedly going to bring Hochevar back for another miserable 2013 campaign. And Dayton Moore also refuses to call up Wil Myers, who has just 4 fewer home runs than Francoeur has RBI’s.

Jeff Francoeur is the worst player in baseball. He is dead last in the league in WAR (Wins above Replacement, how many more wins you would get with this player, than an Irving Falu type player). His Rfield (the value of runs the player creates or gives up with his glove) is -14. I mean, even with my various kabetching about Hochevar, he is better than Frenchy.

The earlier point I made about 24MM for 19 points of win %, what I meant was .019 points of win percentage. I am sure Dayton Moore is a brilliant man, but he spent that 24 million on;

Jeff Francoeur: 16MM, 2 years
Jonathan Broxton: 4MM, 1 year
Jonathan Sanchez: 5.6MM, 1 year
Yuniesky Betancourt: 2MM, 1 year

If you add that up, it comes out around 27, but Francoeur was paid 2.5MM last year. So out of those signings, you have 2 DFA’s (designated for assignment, Betancourt and Sanchez), One trade (Broxton) and a -3.0 WAR (no analysis needed). Maybe the recent call-up of Jake Odorizzi will help the Royal’s jenga tower of a starting rotation finish the season, but I don’t think you are going to go on many winning streaks when you are running the penultimate fly ball pitcher in Bruce Chen out there every 5th day, and in the small possibility that I have not made this clear enough, Luke Hochevar isn't exactly an ace either. On that note, remember that amazing, lefty heavy, franchise saving farm system the Royals had a couple of years ago, even without Odorizzi seeing the light of a Royals minor league uniform? Look and see how well that farm system from 2010 has done;

Eric Hosmer, MLB, 1B
2012: .237/.311/.367

Mike Moustakas, MLB, 3B
2012: .246/.298/.422

Wil Myers, AAA, OF
2012: .314/.387/.600
(worth mentioning that Myers has 37 HR’s)

John Lamb, RKL, LHP
*Tommy John surgery*

Mike Montgomery, AA, LHP
2012: 5-12, 6.07 ERA

Christian Colon, AAA, IF
2012: .301/.376/.413

Danny Duffy, MLB, LHP
*Tommy John surgery*

Chris Dwyer, AA, LHP
2012: 8-12 5.89 ERA


Aaron Crow, MLB, RHP
2012: 3-1 3.36 ERA

Brett Eibner, A+,OF
2012: .199/.298/.408

So, if I were giving them letter grades it would go like this;

Hosmer; C
Moustakas; B-
Myers; A
Lamb; incomplete
Montgomery; F-
Colon; B-
Duffy; B-
Dwyer; F-
Crow; A-
Eibner; I, for I don't care, because he will never see the light of a Royals uniform.

So, we have 2 major league players who we hope are better than they have shown. One fantastic replacement for Francoeur, but at this point, I would be happy to have Daniel Nava replacing Frenchy. One guy who will never see Kauffman Stadium if he doesn't move to 2nd, along with Gio not panning out. 2 Tommy John surgeries. One good reliever. 2 left handers that got demoted to AA. One guy that will never see the majors period. 8 of the 9 Royals position players are settled. If Dayton Moore would bring us a little starting pitching, we could be a legitimate contender in 2013. The Royals are currently closer to being a contender than they have been in a long time. So if we hold on to hope, and don't hit that off button on your television quite yet, it might pay off.