Several people have brought up other SS the could be had, but don’t realize get that many of these guys contractually have some control over their trade directions and KC is not seen as a great career move.

Yuni with all his warts, is still going to give you some hope of competing… and not looking silly with no SS as JP put it or a wet cardboard box as one M’s fan put it.

Bianchi is at least two years away and Aviles is a minimum a year and maybe never on the time line. Much as I like Willie, he’s got more value as the UT guy.

So sit back wonder how you accelerate the minor league progress as that’s the only practical way out of this paper bag unless the ownership has another $40-50M/year to invest in player payroll (if you can interest the FA’s to begin with).

The guy who suggested Chin-Lung Hu had the right idea. In brief major league action, he has a SS fielding percentage of .994 and above average range. Sure, his batting has regressed some, but maybe that’s partly because he has nothing left to prove in the minors, and partly because putting a rookie at shortstop in a pennant race in the second biggest city in baseball can cause loads of pressure. But he’s 25, meaning that he probably won’t be considered a top rank prospect by the Dodgers. Now I’m not saying he’s *the* solution, although he’s a better gamble than Yuni. But he’s young enough to maybe get better, he’s had lots of minor league seasons batting .300 or so so maybe this year is the aberration instead of last year, he’s a reasonably good base stealer (86/33 career minors), and he’s a damned good fielder. And there are probably at least half a dozen such players in the minors, some with less promise (because they’re older), some with more.

The thing is, I look at the Royals and I see a team with some obvious strengths, most notably starting pitching and closer. And I’m thinking, “If that pitching had really good defense behind them, they might save enough runs so that even behind that offense they could win some games.” I mean, Koufax and Drysdale and a gold glove shortstop who really couldn’t hit (great speed, though) and a gold glove caliber center fielder (nobody was taking that GG from Mays, though) won two World Series titles, played in a third, and were in a playoff for a fourth, in a five year period. There *is* a synergy between great pitching and great defense, especially in short playoff series. I’m not comparing Greinke to Koufax, but you could compare him to Drysdale, easy. Just as hitting is contagious, so are slumps, so beefing up the defense could cause some teams handcuffed by Greinke + good defense to remain handcuffed by the rest of the decent rotation. So if the Royals really are just giving up (and this last trade seems to indicate that; they’re paying a couple of contracts they don’t believe in to get a shortstop who won’t help but provides the illusion of help and might sell some tickets and save some jobs) they might as well give up constructively, give the team a defensive identity.

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