Royals Authority

I wonder if Steven Hawking ever pondered what would happen if you placed a black hole inside of a black hole. Because that pretty much sums up the Royals second base situation ever since Omar Infante arrived in Kansas City.

The Royals have desperately needed an able-bodied second baseman for years. Ruben Gotay, Mark Grudzielanek, Mark Teahen, Chris Getz and even Yuniesky Betancourt have all started at second base on Opening Day for the Royals in the last 10 years. Though he was in the twilight of his career, Grudzielanek was serviceable at the position. The rest… Not so much. Maybe that was why Dayton Moore threw a four-year contract valued at $30.25 million (including a team option for a fifth year) at Infante in December of 2013.

In exchange for the cash, Infante has posted an injury-plagued two seasons, posting a -0.4 fWAR which is valued by FanGraphs at a negative $3.9 million. He’s practically stealing from the Glass family at this point.

Infante was entering his age 32 season when he signed that four year deal. In offering, Moore and the Royals brain trust ignored all evidence offered that second basemen tended to age faster than anyone else on the diamond. Indeed, Nate Silver, back in his days at Baseball Prospectus discovered production from second basemen declines somewhat faster than the average player once they reach their thirties. It would appear the Royals made this discovery at the Everyday Low Price of roughly $30 million.

The Royals, naturally, will offer the injury defense. They will tell us that Infante hasn’t been right. He had surgery in November to remove bone chips in his elbow and the Royals believe that will alleviate the pain he was feeling in his shoulder. The connection being, Infante adjusted his throwing mechanics due to the discomfort caused by the bone chips which led to the shoulder issues. He also missed time with a herniated disk in his back in 2014 and was left off the 2015 post season rosters due to an oblique strain. While you can’t connect all the dots and blame the bone chips for all the injuries, it’s pretty clear we are watching a player who has difficulty staying healthy and on the field. The flip side is, do the Royals really want him on the field?

That’s a rhetorical question. Of course the Royals want him on the field. They’re paying him a serious amount of cash to play baseball. Yet the past two seasons, his presence in the lineup has hurt more than helped his team.

The numbers were down across the board in 2015, but there are some interesting nuggets that can be found. If you’re looking for a positive, Infante did have two more extra base hits in 2015 compared to the previous season. Yet his slugging percentage dropped by about 20 points. The number that jumps out to me are his strikeouts, which were steady from 2014 to 2015, despite Infante finishing last season with roughly 90 fewer at bats. The trend becomes even more troubling when you learn his strikeout looking rate dropped from 16 percent in 2014 to 10 percent last summer. For a guy who has been a contact player his entire career, this is a troubling trend.

It turns out Infante was more aggressive at the plate last year. His swing rate was a notch below 48 percent, which was his highest going all the way back to 2007 in his first stint with the Tigers. His O-Swing rate - or the rate at which he swung at pitches outside of the strike zone - was above 35 percent and the highest of his career. As a result of the “grip it and rip it” approach at the plate (although it was frequently sans “rip it”) Infante walked just nine times in 455 plate appearances. Nine times. Among players with more than 450 plate appearances, no one walked less. It’s a Royal epidemic.

Just for fun, (and it’s a bizarre definition of “fun”) here are the 10 hitters with the lowest walk rates in baseball last summer.

That’s gross. Funny that three Royals are in the bottom ten along with two Mets. Hey, five of the players most adverse to drawing a walk in 2015 played in the World Series! The Baseball Gods can have a twisted sense of humor.

While his swing rate was up across the board, there was a noticeable jump in offerings at breaking pitches. Infante swung at a higher percentage of curves and sliders than he had at any point since PitchF/X began tracking.

The jump in swing rate at offspeed had an unfortunate consequence. Going back to 2007, Infante has a whiff rate on breaking pitches usually anywhere between 10 and 13 percent. He’s been fairly consistent. Last year… Not so much. His whiff rate on sliders and curves jumped to an unseemly 20 percent.

Thanks to the PitchF/X data collected by Brooks Baseball, we can see exactly where Infante’s breaking pitch Achilles was located. The next table has 2014 swing and miss data on curves and sliders on the left. 2015 is on the right.

Infante was chasing the breaking stuff low and away a little more frequently, but was missing at a much higher rate than he had in the past.

So we’ve identified the root of the problem. What was the cause? That’s a little less easy to identify. My first inclination was to look at how Infante attacked the fastball, thinking he was avoiding the hard stuff because he was having difficulty catching up to it. However, the numbers from the tables and charts above don’t bare out that hypothesis. Then was it pitch recognition? Hard to say since he’s never really had this issue at any time in his career. Or was it something psychological, where Infante was pressing at the plate, trying to force the issue and it just so happened the breaking pitch low and away was always his weakness. It was just exposed with an aggressive approach.

Whatever the reason, Infante needs to adjust his methods at the plate and reign in his swings on the breaking stuff. In optimal conditions, he’s a below average offensive performer. There’s no reason he should throw more of the balance to the pitcher.

Defensively, Infante has been a solid performer at second. I thought he flashed better range and a stronger arm last summer compared to 2014. Maybe he learned to adjust to the injuries to his arm, or maybe he just learned to play through the pain. Whatever the reason, he was better defensively last year.

He’s also developed a comfort level with his double play partner, Alcides Escobar. There wasn’t a prettier play up the middle than this July night in Cleveland.

According to Baseball Info Solutions, Infante finished 2015 with three defensive runs saved. That’s not an amazing number by any stretch, but it was the 12th best mark among second basemen.

While the defense was strong, there was no amount of glove work that could overcome the dismal offensive production. Time will tell if the surgery to remove the bone spurs propels Infante to his best season yet as a Royal. His age and decline prior to the injuries advise against making a bet for him to rebound. With Christian Colon waiting in the wings, the Royals may not be as patient as they have been in the past. The window is open and the pressure is on Infante to prove he can perform. No one is asking for an All-Star performance. At this point, just some positive value would be a step in the right direction.

You think Omar Infante is going into spring training as the Royals starting second baseman? Not so fast.

From our main man, Dayton Moore:

“We’re going to play the best players. Omar is a terrific second baseman. I know offensively he has not performed the way he has liked or the way we expect him to. I just know we’re going to put the best team out there each and every night, and I know Omar is capable of being that guy. But we like Christian Colon, too. But you need them all to win, as you know. It’s a team, and you count on everyone to perform.”

This is the kind of red meat that gets you to sit up and take notice. The Royals owe Infante, who has more than 12 years of MLB service time, around $17 million for the next two seasons. Contrast that to Colon, a relative major league neophyte, who will earn around the major league minimum. Baseball is a funny sport in that with the guaranteed contracts, teams will stand beside their sunk costs even while they’re busy sinking the team. Infante was not part of the Royals run through October, marginalized by Ben Zobrist and injuries. It’s always been a safe assumption that with Zobrist moving on and Infante still cashing the big checks, that second base would return to the latter. Well, assuming they can’t unload him on a another team.

Of course, plenty of things are said in the winter, then forgotten once the club assembles for spring. Will Colon truly get a chance to supplant Infante? Or is this just a way the Royals are using to light a fire under Infante? A way to send a message they expect him in Surprise in a few weeks ready to play. Tough call at this point.

This post is about Christian Colon. Yet his potential contribution to the Royals over the next couple of seasons is tied to Colon.

We are all familiar with Colon’s pedigree. Of more importance is what he has done for the Royals.

If nothing else happens in his brief career, Colon will have cemented himself firmly in Royals lore. The high chopper in the Wild Card game plated Eric Hosmer with the tying run in the 12th. And his liner brought home the go ahead run in Game Five last November. Think about this. The Royals have played 31 post season games in the last two years. Colon has come to the plate three times. He has two of the biggest hits in Royals history. (His other plate appearance was a walk. Colon has a tidy 1.000/1.000/1.000 career postseason line.)

As Colon rose through the minors, his contact rate was his bread and butter. Contact rate is often something that translates as you progress from level to level and Colon is no exception. He’s maintained a healthy to put bat on ball in his limited major league action. The annual average contact rate is close to 79 percent. Colon, in a small sample of 168 career plate appearances, owns a contact rate approaching 85 percent. As we know from watching the Royals in the last couple of seasons, that contact skill set is something the club values a great deal. Put the ball in play. Move the line.

Since we’ve watched Salvador Perez the last couple of seasons, you may catch yourself thinking high contact is synonymous with free swinging. That’s sometimes the case, not always. By contrast, Colon’s high contact rate comes from working the count, getting into favorable hitting situations, and then joining bat and ball. The Royals as a team eschew the free pass, but given a proper chance, Colon may not fall into that trap. In his limited action, he’s managed to draw a base on balls in 8.3 percent of all plate appearances, which is better than the major league average. That’s right in line with a minor league walk rate average of slightly above eight percent.

With the ability to maintain a high contact rate, combined with a strong knowledge of the strike zone and the ability to stay patient to accept a free pass, Colon could give the Royals a solid on base candidate in a lineup where they can always use that skill set. On the flip side, Colon has limited power potential. He’s more of a gap to gap hitter whose power profile will be molded in the form of doubles and the occasional triple.

The projections don’t have enough of a major league track record on Colon to formulate numbers that make a great deal of sense. Steamer projects him at .264/.316/.352 with a 6.6 walk rate. Marcel projects a .277/.337/.391. Both systems have Colon as a part timer. ZiPS, which doesn’t attempt to project playing time, has the Royals utility man at .268/.317/.351. Maybe the truth can be found somewhere between the high and the low projections.

And that’s really the question surrounding Colon. Can he deliver with enough consistency to justify a full-time major league job? Last year, the Royals envisioned Colon as someone who could fill in at third, short and second. He filled in at all three positions at various times in the first half of 2015. In fact, as he’s progressed through the minors, his likely role seems to have adjusted to major league utility man. His upside is a steady, yet unspectacular second baseman.

Is Colon a viable defensive candidate at second base? All the evidence (the metrics and the eye test) suggest yes. Let’s start with the metrics. It’s limited at the major league level, but over the last two seasons according to Inside Edge, Colon has had 63 chances to record an out in 160 innings. Of those 63 chances, 56 have been classified as “routine,” meaning the average second baseman will make 90 to 100 percent of the plays. In Colon’s case, he’s converted every single chance in that category. He’s had seven non-routine opportunities and come away from those with just one out. That confirms the eye test that Colon is steady, but unspectacular with the glove at the keystone position. He possesses average range, a strong arm, and is good enough on the double play pivot you feel confident in his ability to turn two. What he lacks in ability, he counters with superior instincts. He has a feel for the game around second base. That helps him keep and edge and allows him to translate what are averageish defensive tools into an above-average package at second.

Same thing goes for baserunning. He not a burner by any stretch, but his speed is helped by good instincts on the bases. He knows when to take the extra base and doesn’t seem to take foolish chances on the bases. It’s an aspect of his game that can be an asset.

The only question Colon has to answer is: Would he be better than Infante? This is the question the Royals have to answer not just in this case, but in every situation throughout their organization. With payroll increasing to all-time highs every winter, they can ill afford to set money on fire by giving it to an underperforming veteran when they have someone with limited experience who can provide the same - or better - major league production.

That’s the Christian Colon question.

Young is a fastball/slider pitcher who will occasionally mix in a change-up. His average fastball is clocked at 84 or 85 mph. As you are probably saying to yourself at this moment, “I bet he doesn’t miss many bats with that kind of velo,” you would be correct. He got a swing and miss on 7.1 percent of all swings last year. That’s Jeremy Guthrie-esque. (Guthrie has a swing and miss rate of 7.2 percent.) For some league-wide perspective, Young’s swing and miss rate was the 13th lowest among 88 qualified starting pitchers.

Generally, it’s a good idea to miss bats. I say generally, because there are exceptions. One of those exceptions is if you have a quality defense behind you, scooping up all those inevitable balls in play. Another exception would be if you pitch in a pitcher-friendly environment where your fly balls are more apt to stay in the yard. Young had both those things working for him last year in Seattle.

Looking at his stats, Young seems the picture of a very average starting pitcher. When he is healthy. His injury report is enough to make the most hardened baseball observer cringe. He had shoulder surgery in August 2009, which caused him to miss the rest of the season. He missed most of 2010 with a sprain in the anterior capsule of his shoulder and missed most of 2011 when he had a second shoulder surgery to repair the anterior capsule. He spent 2013 in the Nationals system where his season was cut short by another shoulder surgery designed to remove pressure on a nerve. No pitcher wants to have their shoulder cut open. It’s difficult enough to come back from one. Three? Tip of the cap to Young. The guy is obviously a competitive animal.

Young usually starts batters with his fastball. In fact, it’s his first offer 85 percent of the time to lefties and 70 percent of the time to same-side batters. He stays with the fastball if he falls behind, but will show slider when he’s ahead in the count. He will mix in a change against left-handed batters, but will rarely throw one against hitters from the right side.

Both fastball and slider yield a ton of fly balls. Last summer, Young got a fly ball almost 59 percent of the time the ball was put in play. That was the highest fly ball rate in the majors, and it wasn’t even close. Second place belonged to our old friend Jake Odorizzi who’s fly ball rate was just under 49 percent. That’s right. A ten point gap between Young and the rest of the field. That’s not some anomaly. Young’s fly ball rate has been in the mid-fifties nearly every season since 2006. His career fly ball rate is 55 percent.

It’s easy to see why Young is such a fly ball pitcher. For one, velocity. For two, it’s all about the location. From Brooks Baseball, here is a chart illustrating the location of all pitches Young threw in 2014.

He works up in the zone and on the left side of the plate. (Meaning he’s inside to right-handed batters.) Despite what Uncle Hud may tell you, pitching up in the zone doesn’t necessarily mean you are a fly ball pitcher. In fact, the red concentration in the upper left corner is an area where Young generates a bunch of ground balls. It would seem left-handed batters reach and roll their wrists for the pitch up and off the plate which results in a few more worm-burners. But for Young, those pitches up inside the strike zone do help his amazingly high fly ball rate.

Let’s be real for a moment. If there is any team in baseball that could be defined as “the perfect fit” for Young, it’s the Royals. The high-acreage outfield, the tremendous outfield defense, the infielders who can snag pop-ups of all shapes and sizes. Kudos to the Royals for looking at the market and, while there may not be an immediate need, they recognized the fit. He’s in the fold and should one of the top five starters fall early in the year, Young is clearly the next in line. That’s just good roster management. And that’s something you haven’t often read from me about this team.

Young signed for a base salary of $675,000. There are enough incentive clauses built into his contract that, should he hit them all, he would net around $6 million. According to The Star, Young can earn $1 million in service time bonuses. That’s $250k for making the Opening Day roster along with another quarter million for each of 30, 60 and 90 days on the roster. He can pocket $1.975 million in bonuses for innings pitched and $2.35 million in bonuses for games pitched. I like this kind of deal. It’s a, “Yeah, we know you are a starter but we don’t have room for another starter, so why don’t you come here for less money, and if you do end up in the rotation we will make it right” kind of contract.

Dayton Moore has informed the world that Young will make the team out of spring training. Knowing the Royals rotation is set at this point, barring injury, Young will debut for his new club out of the bullpen. That brings up some interesting bullpen calculus. We know the locks (Greg Holland, Wade Davis, Kelvin Herrera, Jason Frasor, and now Young.) If Luke Hochevar is healthy and ready to go, he’s there too. That’s six arms for what should be seven spots. There’s Rule 5 draftee Jandel Gustave to consider. And also Louis Coleman who is out of options. Of course we can’t forget about Brandon Finnegan. (Although the hope remains the Royals will do the right thing and send him to the minors to continue his development as a starter.)

Could the Royals go with an eight-man bullpen? That would be insanity, but the Royals don’t always do the conventional when it comes to roster management. I bet they will. At least at the start of the season, to keep Coleman on the roster so they have less of a risk of losing him on waivers should they send him down after that first week.

Either way, Young will open the season in Kansas City on a team-friendly deal that will pay him appropriately should he find himself in the rotation. It’s a shrewd move that brings this team some depth in the rotation.

There will be baseball today in Surprise, Arizona. It won’t mean anything with regard to the upcoming season, but it is baseball nonetheless.

Two of the Royals’ pitchers who are tentatively scheduled to pitch this afternoon are twenty-two year old Jandel Gustave and thirty-one year old Yohan Pino. If either wants to head north in April with the big league club, they have some work to do.

Gustave was a Rule 5 pick of the Red Sox who was then traded to the Royals for cash (American, by the way). Despite the trade, he comes with all the trappings of a Rule 5 pick and will have to stay on the big league roster all season or be offered back to his original team, the Astros. Here is Gustave by the numbers:

• 100 - the velocity of his fastball
• 67 - walks issued in his two seasons in the Dominican Summer League….in 45 innings.
• 13 - hit batters last season in 79 A-ball innings
• 14 - wild pitches last season

So, you get the picture, right?

Gustave throws really, really hard. He has limited control of anything that is not a fastball and, let’s face it, minimal control of the fastball. Jandel has good strikeout numbers in his five minor league seasons (2 in the Dominican, 2 in Rookie ball and last year in Low-A) - right at a strikeout per inning. Good, not eye popping. He does have eye-popping or maybe eye-bleeding control numbers. After walking 8.7 batter per 9 innings in 2012, Gustave cut his walk rate drastically by last season (just 3.3 BB/9), but keep in mind that rate does not count the 13 batters he hit. To steal the line from a movie and countless others: “I have no idea where the ball is going…really.”

What the Royals are going to be looking for this spring is if Gustave can get the ball over the plate enough to log some innings when the team is up 10 or down 10. If he can get the ball over the plate a semi-reasonable amount of the time, one would think the team could stash him as the seventh reliever in a deep bullpen. The slot likely will only needs to get through 30 low leverage innings, but you have to be able to get through them. If Gustave can’t throw strikes or stop hitting batters, he cannot even occupy that role. Of course if the Royals go with eight relievers……well, that’s a column for another day.

If young and raw describes Gustave, then old and weathered is Yohan Pino.

Pino finally made the majors for the first time last season, starting 11 games for the Twins. Featuring a high 80’s fastball. backed by a slider, changeup and an occasional curve, Pino posted an earned run average of 5.07. His FIP of 3.94 indicates Pino may have been better than that.

In the minors, Pino has been in AA or AAA since 2007 and amassed 1,105 total innings splitting time between the bullpen and the rotation. Yohan has posted a career minor league strikeout rate of 8.1/9: a number that has held reasonably well at the AAA level. Coupled with a decent walk rate and average home run rate and you have a guy who is a pitcher, not a thrower. Now, is he a good enough pitcher?

In Pino, the Royals have a guy who has been a swingman basically his entire professional life. He even closed some for Louisville in 2013, so there is no role that is foreign to him. Let’s face it, at thirty-one any role that involves travelling on a charter jet would be welcome. On the surface and maybe in real life, Pino seems like a nice guy to have as your number six or seven reliever, capable of eating up garbage innings on a bad (or really good) night and ready to make that spot start. Temper that thought, however, with knowing that he has put up some of his best number being an old guy in AAA.

It never hurts to have a Pino in your inventory, but it usually doesn’t hurt to not have one, either. The Royals are his sixth organization (seven if you count the Twins twice), so a lot of eyes have had a look at Yohan and decided they could live without him. I think he likely has a real shot at the last bullpen spot, especially if the Royals decide keeping Gustave would be just too painful. If not there, he is likely candidate number one to get the call from Omaha if one of the starters goes down.

We won’t get much of a hint today about what the future holds for either of these guys, but we will have baseball and these two will pitch. The over/under on balls to the screen by Gustave is two, by the way.

How did we get here? How did we arrive at the moment where Kendrys Morales became the Royals designated hitter?

It seems the process was two-fold.

First, the Royals were desperate to part with Billy Butler. We’ve written about this at length. There was just no way the Royals were going to bring Butler back. The Royals declined his option, made a token play at re-signing him and then let him go when Oakland ponied up serious cash leading Moore to admit he misread the market. Second, the Royals figured they would go with the method du jour of rotating the DH spot among players who needed a rest and a couple of bench bats to keep them fresh. They didn’t need a full-time designated hitter.

And within a month and a half, their course of direction changed and Morales was at a introductory press conference at The K. Strange days, indeed.

I gave my reaction to the Morales signing when it happened. It hasn’t changed. Instead of rehashing how the Royals could have better spent their money, let’s instead dive into the player the Royals purchased for two years and all those millions.

Morales hit the free agent market following the 2013 season after turning down a qualifying offer from the Mariners. Teams, leery of surrendering a draft pick as part of the cost of signing Morales, kept their distance. Morales didn’t sign a deal until after the 2014 draft in June. Turning down the qualifying offer cost Morales two-plus months of last season. When he finally got in uniform he was… not good.

Let’s just start with the big picture of Morales’s career stats.

The conventional wisdom is missing spring training in 2014 hurt Morales. I certainly understand that point. And I’m sure it played a role in his struggles. However, to broach this argument is to make it sound like he improved over time. Slow start and he picked up a little steam as he got more plate appearances during the season. Except that’s not how it went down.

June - .215/.250/.316 with a 52 wRC+
July - .216/.243/.289 with a 46 wRC+
Aug - .255/.321/.388 with a 103 wRC+
Sept - .183/.276/.355 with a 81 wRC+

That’s one month out of four where he was roughly a league average hitter. That’s three months out of four where he was breathtakingly subpar. The Mariners finished one game back of the A’s for the final Wild Card spot. It’s not a stretch to imagine Morales and his -0.9 fWAR cost Seattle a shot at the postseason. He was that much of a liability in the lineup.

Let’s take a step back and look again at Morales’s career numbers. There’s a breakout 2009. There’s the truncated 2010 season when he broke his leg jumping on home plate celebrating a walk-0ff, 10th inning grand slam. There’s the missing 2011 thanks to said injury. Then, there’s a nice little comeback. He never reached his pre-injury offensive heights, but when you miss a season and a half and return to average an OPS+ of 121 and post a wRC+ of 119 in back to back seasons, that’s a comeback.

In examining the market for Nelson Cruz, Sam Miller at Baseball Prospectus came up with the term “bomb-ass designated hitter.” The thinking goes that teams don’t really need a designated hitter. They can survive the way the Royals thought they would navigate the American League in 2015 by rotating a cast of characters in the role. It’s less expensive and, with the correct roster, it can be effective. Now, if you’re going to spend money on a full-time DH, that DH had better be amazing. He’d better be bomb-ass. And according to Miller, bomb-ass for a DH is one who owns around a 128 OPS+.

It turns out there are very few bomb-ass designated hitters. Victor Martinez? If he’s healthy, he’s totally bomb-ass. David Ortiz? Don’t be silly. Bomb-ass. Old friend Billy Butler? Not bomb-ass, but closer than you may think.

Here is a list of players who, from 2010 to 2014, have collected at least 1,000 plate appearances and had at least half of those plate appearances coming as a designated hitter. In the interest of discovering who is bomb-ass, the list is sorted by OPS+.

Wow. Some old-timers on that list. Let’s run it again, but this time narrow the span to three seasons and 500 plate appearances.

Morales hasn’t been a bomb-ass DH since he broke his leg. He’s been adequate, but he hasn’t been worth the big bucks. Not even close.

Fine. The 2014 season hurt his numbers, you say. Badly. Such an outlier, you may suggest, it would be unfair to include it in your assessment of Morales as a bomb-ass DH. Sadly, as much as you may want to explain it away, you can’t. It happened. It was real. And it was ugly. So, so ugly. This is not some sort of Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It cannot be erased.

Then what exactly happened to Morales in 2014 that made it so awful? In a nutshell, he stopped driving the ball.

Compare his spray chart from 2013 to his chart from last season. Notice how much deeper his fly balls travelled in ’13 compared to ’14.

Morales is a switch-hitter and his power comes primarily from the right side. There are clusters of blue representing fly balls in left and center that are present in 2014, but they aren’t as deep on the plot as 2013. That has to account for something. As RJ Anderson discovered at Baseball Prospectus, Morales posted career low BABIP on both line drives and fly balls last year.

Morales floundered from both sides last year.

As LHB - .206/.271/.313 with a .239 BABIP and 64 wRC+

As RHB - .239/.281/.381 with a .252 BABIP and 86 wRC+

The power spike as a right-handed batter comes clubbing four home runs in 134 at bats compared to four home runs in 233 at bats as a lefty. Again, that’s where his power lives - from the right side.

Can Morales bounce back? Certainly. No matter how you slice it, 2014 vibes rock bottom. I would bet Morales sees improvement. The projection systems tend to agree.

Steamer - .262/.319/.419 with a 107 wRC+ and 0.5 fWAR

ZiPS - .261/.315/.417 with a 105 wRC+ and 0.6 fWAR

PECOTA - .266/.320/.426 with a .276 TAv and 1.2 WARP

Those are some numbers that represent a nice bounce back. If only he were a middle infielder. Alas, he doesn’t own a glove and those numbers are still far from bomb-ass. If the Royals were so hell-bent on throwing money away, they should have just exercised Butler’s option and been saddled with an overpriced DH for one year instead of two. Oh, well. The horse has left the barn and all that.

Industry estimates of Morales’s contract varied from one year at $5 million to 2 years and $20 million. The Royals brought him on board for two years at $17 million. He will earn $6.5 million this season and $9 million in 2016. There is a mutual option for $11 million in ’17 that the Royals can buyout for $1.5 million. No matter how you slice this contract, it’s on the high side of the spectrum and represents a severe overpay for a one-dimensional player whose one dimension is fading. And now, just months after floating the idea they would use the designated hitter position to rotate among their offense, the Royals have a full-time DH on their roster. A DH who is in the decline phase of his career and hasn’t been bomb-ass since 2010 just before he suffered a horrific injury.

The signing didn’t make sense when it happened and it doesn’t make sense today. In fact, there isn’t a way to spin this in a positive for a team in the position of the Royals. The Royals (and their small market brethren) need to make smart fiscal decisions. That means shopping on the free agent market for a DH is folly. Especially one who clearly isn’t bomb-ass like Morales.

If you are a real prospect hound, then you already know what you want or need to know about Cheslor Cuthbert, Orlando Calixte and Lane Adams. In fact, just the other day, Hunter Samuels at Kings of Kaufman gave you some insight on Cuthbert.

A few posts back, I touched on how I used to pour over prospects and dream of what they would become. Not so much anymore, for a myriad of reasons. Among those is very simply that a more successful major league team holds my interest a great deal more than one that loses 106 games and makes me begin to believe that Justin Huber is going to win a major league batting title (or that a fat guy named Hernadez will be as good as the fat guy named Colon).

Anyway, here we are with three guys on the 40 man roster that have zero chance of making the major league club out of spring training and three that you should hope don’t see quality action for your Kansas City Royals during the 2015 season. That’s not a criticism of these three, just a fact of where they are and where we, as fans, want the Royals to be this year.

In Cuthbert, you have a still young (22) player who still hints at some power potential, but slugged just .413 splitting time between two hitters’ parks in 2014. He is no longer the third baseman of the future, spending time at first and even a little at second last year. There is talk of extended work at second this spring, but moving to second when one was not a very good defensive third baseman is certainly bucking tradition.

Trust me, I am not against the attempt. When the organizational depth chart is Omar Infante to Christian Colon to whatever utility infielder gets cut on March 26th, I am all for trying Cuthbert. If the bat doesn’t play at one of the corners, then it would look a lot better at second…..assuming the glove is at least better than Albert Callaspo or Esteban German. Of course, you could always try Calixte.

There is little doubt that Calixte can field: be it second, short or third. After seasons full of slick fielding alternating with a stack of erros, Calixte has limited the error total to a reasonable amount (for the minors), but it is the bat: oh the freaking bat!

Calixte’s career minor league on-base percentage is an even .300. That is ON-BASE PERCENTAGE, not batting average, not anything that equates .300 to being good. The now 23 year old flashes intriguing pop for a middle infielder who can flash the leather, but intrigue does not a major league regular make. It might make for a utility infielder. Hey, Andres Blanco has managed to make a major league living, Calixte might too.

Lane Adams, a 25 year old right handed hitting outfielder, has never been to Omaha, but he did get to have some fun last fall in Kansas City. His career minor league triple slash of .267/.344/.406 is pretty representative of his journey through the system. Adams is athletic, has very good speed and translates that into stolen bases. He can field and sort of maybe can hit. Adams ceiling might be a poor-man’s Alex Gordon or he maybe it’s just being the next Paulo Orlando.

If Alex Rios falls on his face and the baseball gods give Ned Yost a lightning bolt infusion of how to actually use a platoon, you could see Adams (or Paulo Orlando!) platooning with Jarrod Dyson, but again, if you want the Royals to make 2015 exciting that is not the scenario that makes it happen.

In the end, these are three guys that I would almost guarantee will someday log some time in the Majors (more than Lane Adams’ three at-bats). It likely won’t be this year. If you are a Royals’ fan, you better hope it is not this year.

Once upon a time, John Lamb was a top twenty prospect….in all of baseball. A six foot four lefty with a monster curve. A steal in the fifth round. A future top (or near to the top) of the rotation starter. Somewhere back in those heady times, some writer (me) projected Lamb to be the Opening Day starter in 2015 (or maybe even 2014, I can’t remember). In case you’re having a hard time keeping up, I was wrong - even if it was 2015.

If you want to gauge John Lamb’s career, Google him. Weed out the ESPN, Yahoo ‘player pages’ and then start checking the dates of actual articles. Lots of information, scouting reports and what not. Now, find one from sometime after April of 2014.

That’s what happens when you have Tommy John surgery 13 starts into your AA career, struggle to get back and spend an agonizingly long period of time after you do throwing your fastball 84 mph. It’s not fair, but baseball has a tendency to be like that.

Now, let’s focus on one thing: John Lamb is still only 24 years old.

Last season, Lamb threw 138 innings at AAA and, after striking out just over five batters per nine innings in 2013, John’s strikeout rate rose to 8.5 K/9 (albeit at the expense of the highest walk rate of his career). A 3.97 earned run average in AAA doesn’t scream major starter, but it doesn’t scream give up, either. Lamb’s velocity had crept back up to the high eighties and even into the low nineties.

In July, Lamb struck 11 and allowed just one run over seven innings and followed that up with a two hit-six inning start. After a rocky four innings after those two stellar outings, Lamb then spun seven innings of one hit ball on July 30th. That was enough to generate a little buzz, a little hope.

Unfortunately, Lamb made it through six innings only once after that: allowing 24 earned runs in 33 innings (and six more unearned runs if you are skeptical of minor league scoring). End of buzz. End of hope?

John Lamb is still just 24 years old.

There is still time for Lamb to get back, or at least get to the majors. Maybe he won’t be at the front of a major league rotation anymore, but maybe he could fit in a rotation somewhere. Maybe.

While it is all part of the game and hardly rare, I hate it when young guys with promise get hurt. Lamb not only struggled to return from Tommy John, but fought other injuries as well on the way back. He lost most of 2011 and 2012. The 2013 campaign was pretty much just a debacle of ‘well, he’s got to pitch somewhere’. Maybe 2014, average as it was, is just enough success to get Lamb back on track.

Maybe.

Maybe next spring, John Lamb’s profile will be more about the promise of the future and less about the past.

Eleven million dollars.

That is a manly bet.

Dayton Moore has made just that on Alex Rios. Thirty-four year old Alex Rios. Enigmatic, sometimes disinterested, Alex Rios. I play a lot of craps. I’ve got nothing on Dayton Moore when it comes to gambling.

There was a time when Alex Rios was being compared to the likes of Carlos Beltran. From 2006 through 2008, Rios was a force, by both traditional and advanced measurements. Rios was worth somewhere between 13 and 16 WAR in those three years (fWAR liked him better than bWAR, but they both liked him plenty). He slugged, he ran, he got on base and he played defense. Alex Rios could play the game and he’s made $75 million doing it.

Along the way, however, things have changed. Maybe you can still compare him to Beltran, but only to the current Carlos whose body has let him down. Since being a legitimate All-Star, Rios has twice posted on-base percentages below .300. His defense has gone from an asset to a negative seemingly overnight…and stayed there for the past four seasons. Rios’ walk rate is almost half what it was during his days as a budding star. Alex still runs and runs well, when he feels like it, but he also hit four (4) home runs last season….in Texas.

Now thirty-four, it is getting harder to distinguish between whether the lack of production is a result of Rios’ disinterest and the simple fact that he just might be getting old or that a thumb injury is to blame. The Royals are betting that Alex Rios on a one year deal (with an option of course) will be motivated, rejuvenated, focused…all that, maybe even some grit. It might be a bad gamble or it might be a Melky Cabrera resurgence.

As many of you know, Baseball Reference has a Similarity Score which is mostly just fun. I took some heat for noting that their formula compared Eric Hosmer to Keith Hernandez at the same age, so we’ll proceed with caution. Now, if Hosmer is an MVP winner this season, like Hernandez was at the same point in their careers then Baseball Reference will laugh at you and your little dog.

I bring this up because Alex Rios has a fun list on his Similarity Score, starting with the top name: Amos Otis. After Amos, comes Claudell Washington, Andy Van Slyke, Chet Lemon, Marquis Grissom, Gary Maddox and Dusty Baker. That’s a good list and testament to what Rios has done, however sporadically and how far in the past it may have been.

Otis was solid in his age 34 season (it was strike shortened) and average at age 35, but done after that. Washington was not good at age 34 and done after that. Van Slyke put up good numbers at age 34, but didn’t play after that. Chet Lemon had a poor age 34 season, but a decent age 35 campaign (albeit minus all power), but was then done. Grissom had an awful age 34 season, but then posted two of his best three power years at age 35 and 36 (although his on-base percentage was in decline). Gary Maddox had not been an above average offensive performer since he was 29 and did nothing from 34 on to change that. Dusty Baker, an All-Star at 33, was a part-time player by age 35.

As good as the list under Alex Rios’ Similarity Score may be, the guys on it were in decline or basically done when they were the same age as Rios will be in 2015. Like I began, it’s a helluva a gamble.

Wade Davis is the key to The Trade.

I’m convinced I wrote something like that. Probably about two years ago. And I probably thought I was damn clever. After all, the Royals had James Shields for only two years before he was moving on to greener free agent pastures. The Royals hold three affordable team options on Davis, who would be with the club for five years total if they are exercised. Yes, that made him the key to the trade.

Let’s get right to the numbers. Because they are damn impressive.

I mean… Just look at those. Then look at them again. They are almost impossible to comprehend. They’re video game numbers. That’s it. Wade Davis set the difficulty level to “rookie” and played an entire season.

It’s the Wade Davis Experience.

Davis scrapped his sinker, relying on his fastball, curve and cutter.

The fastball has gained a couple ticks of velocity since moving full-time to the bullpen. His heater averaged 91-92 mph as a starter. Last year as a reliever, he brought the fastball at 96.7 mph. It’s a true weapon, generating a swing and miss over 16 percent of the time. As you can see from the graph above, it gained velocity as the season progressed. Opposing hitters managed just a .161 batting average against his fastball and in 135 at bats that resolved with that pitch, Davis yielded just three extra base hits - a pair of doubles and a triple.

The cutter is a ground ball machine. Over 73 percent of the balls put in play on his cutter are ground balls. Is it any surprise that opposing hitters managed a minute .115 batting average against. Oh, and not a single batter managed an extra base hit against the cutter. Davis features the pitch to both lefties and right-handed batters, but it’s his go-to secondary pitch to same side batters when he’s ahead in the count. Doesn’t matter that hitters may know what’s coming. They’re not going to touch that pitch.

And the curve? It features the 12-to-6 break and like the cutter, is an infielder’s friend. Davis gets a ground ball on about 63 percent of his curves put in play. That’s the pitch he throws to left-handed batters when he’s ahead in the count.

I try to avoid hyperbole, but I’m not sure we have seen anything quite like Davis’s 2014 performance in a Royals uniform.

As you would imagine for an eighth-inning guy, Davis had the second-highest leverage index on the team at 1.59. (Any thing above 1.0 is considered “high” pressure.) At this time last year, we were debating the merits of sticking Davis back in the rotation for another shot, or moving him to the bullpen. There will be no such debate this spring. The question this time around is: Can he repeat his performance?

I don’t see why not. His pitches are nasty, his ground ball rate is lofty and the Royals will place a fine infield defense behind him once again. His 87 percent strand rate looks like it’s due to regress, but given the small sample size of the relief pitching game, it wouldn’t be crazy if the correction was minor. He struck out 39 percent of all batters faced. His command was impeccable. There was no smoke and mirror component to Davis’s 2014 season. No fluke or outlier that will be difficult to duplicate.

Wade Davis’s 2014 was real, and it was spectacular.

Davis is signed for $7 million for 2015 and the team holds another option for $8 million in 2016 and $10 million for 2017. That’s a fair amount of coin for a reliever, but considering Greg Holland is going to earn $8.25 million in his second year of being eligible for arbitration, Davis’s contract isn’t extreme in the least. What could be extreme is the Royals committing over $15 million to two relievers. Granted, the pair are among the best (if not THE BEST) in the game at what they do. The Royals actually have both on what the industry would view as team-friendly deals.

As much as you’ll hate to hear this, I think the Royals need to explore a trade. Either Davis or Holland. The return the Royals get for either of the relievers would justify making this move. Especially as we move through spring training and teams are assessing their needs as Opening Day approaches. There will be trade partners and some will reek of desperation. The Royals bullpen is an embarrassment of riches that should be leveraged for the greater good. Trade Holland and Davis can slide into the closer role. Trade Davis and Kelvin Herrera can move up an inning. There are so many options concerning this bullpen. I get the appeal of standing pat. It’s easy and we saw how excellent it was last season. Another October run would totally justify keeping the pen together. But can the Royals recapture the magic from last fall? That’s a post for another day. For now, the bullpen is a nice problem for Dayton Moore to have. He just needs to make the right decision on how to deal with it in the way that gives the team the maximum benefit.

Over the past four seasons, Alcides Escobar has played more games at shortstop than anyone else in the majors. To my eyes, Escobar has played the position well. Yes, there are some mental gaffes on routine plays here and there, but there is also a long list of outstanding, eye-popping, just damn good highlight plays.

While you should probably just trust my judgment, a more reality based approach would lead you to the defensive metrics. Those like, but don’t love, Alcides Escobar. Over the past four years - a decent sample size from which to view these - Escobar is 8th in the majors in Defensive Runs Saved and 9th in Ultimate Zone Rating. Good, not great.

Don’t like the above metrics? Think maybe all the shifting that goes on these days has bled into inconsistent data? Possible, likely, a little, shut up? You want to go old school? Alcides Escobar, over the last four seasons, ranks 8th in Fielding Percentage (a stat that tells you pretty much how often a guy makes a play that the official scorer can in no way manufacture something that made said play even slightly challenging).

Inside Edge Fielding is a little more interesting, but subjective in that a human decides if the chances of making a play is remote, unlikely, about even, likely or almost certain. In these categories - based on data from the last three seasons - Alcides Escobar has made a higher percentage of the ‘remote’ category plays than any other shortstop. He ranks third in those deemed unlikely and fifth in those where the chances were considered about even. There are your highlights and, not surprisingly, the reason the metrics don’t love Alcides is that he is just 18th in percentage of plays that are considered ‘almost certain’ to be made.

That said, we all know defense is not the issue with Alcides Escobar. He is without question better than average in the field. Almost certainly at least good with the glove and, quite possibly, great at it. Pretty clearly, Alcides Escobar can more than do the job at shortstop.

Another thing that is not a problem with Escobar is baserunning. His skills there get overshadowed by the pure speed of Terrance Gore and Jarrod Dyson and the incredible athleticism of Lorenzo Cain, but Escobar is outstanding. Using Fangraphs BsR metric for baserunning, Escobar was 12th in the majors last season and ranks 6th over the past four seasons combined. That ain’t bad, kids.

Of course, it is the bat that makes us all wonder. You can sum up Escobar just by looking at this graph comparing his on-base percentage to the league average:

Obviously, throw out 2008 as there is simply not enough data to be worth talking about it, but since then you see Escobar flirt between league average and below average. This is on-base percentage, but pick a stat, any stat and you get a graph that looks similar. I’m not joking, average, slugging, ISO, wOBA…whatever.

The driver is BABIP, which is no surprise. When Escobar’s BABIP is over .300 as it was in 2012 (.344) and 2014 (.326), his offense flirts with league average. That, combined with his defense and baserunning, then makes him a valuable commodity (2.2 and 3.4 fWAR). When the BABIP sags, so does the offense and Alcides becomes considerably less valuable.

The thing about Escobar’s batting average of balls in play is that there seems to be little reason for the fluctuations. His line drive percentage over the last three years (2 average and 1 below average offensive campaigns) are remarkably close. If you feel like 2014 was a ‘turn the corner’ offensive season for Alcides, you might want to be mindful that his groundball rate was at a career low, as was his walk rate.

One can hang their hat on a marginally lower swing percentages on pitches outside the strike zone in his two good years (2012 and 14). However, while 2014 sported his highest contact percentage on pitches in the zone, Escobar recorded his lowest contact percentage in the zone in his other good offensive season. If BABIP is a reflection of luck, then Alcides Escobar may be its poster child. With 3,200 plate appearances on his resume, the Royals’ shortstop is unlikely to suddenly blossom into a consistent on-base guy year in year out and probably that is okay.

Slated to earn $3 million in 2015, Escobar will be worth the money strictly on his ability to run the bases, play the field and, yes, bunt. That is only half sarcastic, by the way, as Alcides is an excellent bunter. He was 11th in the majors in bunt hits in 2014 and 12th in that category over the last four seasons. Over the past four seasons, Escobar is 2nd in sacrifices and was 7th in the majors last year. Ned Yost smirks in your general direction.

In the new landscape of baseball, where defense and pitching have overtaken hitting the ball over the wall in importance, the 2014 version of Alcides Escobar works just fine. Take heed, my friends, because just the season before, your World Series lead-off hitter posted an on-base percentage of just .259. He was still worth 1.1 fWAR that season, but I’ll take the 3.4 fWAR of 2014 if you ask. Given their off-season, the Royals need the 2014 Escobar to make a repeat performance in 2015.