The Hochevar Principle
Posted: October 5th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 37 Comments »
Got about nine different blog posts juggling — could be a big blog Monday. But in the meantime, I have to get up this bit because I find it staggering:
Since World War II ended there have been 16 pitchers who have made 25 starts in a season and put up an ERA higher than 6.50.
– Jose Lima — the master of the awful season — did it twice. He had a 6.99 ERA in 2005 and a 6.65 ERA in 2000. Impressive. And don’t underestimate the skill necessary to have TWO seasons that bad. Somebody has to keep sending you out there for 25 starts. You better be awfully good in your good years.
– Darryl Kile did it in Colorado in 1999 when his curveball wasn’t bending in the light air.
– Mike Moore was 35 years old and done when he punched up a 7.53 ERA for the legendary 1995 Detroit Tigers. Well, it was really the 1996 Tigers who were legendary — that WHOLE TEAM had a 6.38 ERA. But the 1995 team set it up.
– Jim Deshais lost it very suddenly in 1994, and in an amazing feat never accomplished before or since, he led the lead in starts AND posted a 7.00-plus ERA (7.39 to be exact). Think about how tough a combination that has to be … and how bad those Twins were to allow him to lead the league in starts. Deshais was a good pitcher in his late 20s, and so despite his legendarily bad 1994, the Philadelphia Phillies thought he could not possibly have just gotten THAT BAD. They Phillies gave him two starts in 1995. He lasted 5 1/3 innings and gave up 12 runs.
– David Cone was 37 and beat up in 2000 when he posted a 6.91 ERA. You know, if you take that year out of his career, Cone is 190-112 with a 3.27 ERA.
– Casey Fossum Jeff Fassero* was 36 when he had a 7.20 ERA in 1999. He would hang around until he was 43 as a long reliever and spot starter.
*I cannot believe I confused Casey Fossum for Jeff Fassero. Oh, wait, yeah I can.
– Ryan Rupe did it in 2001 and Ryan Drese did it in 2002, which strongly suggests that someone named “Ryan” was the victim of the worst witness protection programming in the history of the FBI. And then, in 2004, someone called “Ryan Vogelsong” punched up precisely a 6.50 ERA for Pittsburgh. Yeah. Really believable.
– Several relatively young players — Colby Lewis (7.30 ERA), Jason Bere (7.19 ERA), John Snyder (6.68 ERA), Rob Bell (6.67 ERA), Garrett Olson (6.65 ERA), Casey Fossum (6.65) — pulled the trick.
– LaTroy Hawkins — and he might be the best fit for our point — punched up a 6.66 ERA at age 26. Everyone loved his talent, but the Twins figured right there that he was just not going to make it as a starter. The put him in the pen where he showed promise, then fumbled around badly as a closer, then emerged as a set-up man, then closed games for the Cubs.
So what’s the point? Luke Hochevar, of course. He became the 17th pitcher this season. Luke finished the year with a sadly familiar dreadful performance — and for the year he was 7-13 with a 6.55 ERA. It was such an odd year — you already know that Hochevar had three impressive performances (a three-hit shutout, a 13-K, 0-walk game, and an 80-pitch complete game). He also became only the second pitcher in baseball history to post a 6.50 ERA with a 2-to-1 strikeout to walk ratio (along with the ubiquitous Ryan Rupe). He also became one of the few pitchers to actually throw worse once it was theorized that he was tipping pitches.
And now the Royals are going to have to figure out what to do with Hochevar. My suspicion is that the Royals will do what they so often do — hope for the best. Hochevar was the first overall pick in the draft. He only just turned 26. He showed a few bright signs in the midst of this awful year. There are reasons to believe, and the Royals have been the sort of team the last 15-plus years to embrace any and all reasons to believe. Yes, I think Hochevar will come to camp next year as one of the “candidates” for a starting job, there will much talk about how hard he worked in the off-season, they will make some slight change in his delivery or talk about some mental adjustment he made, and life will go on.
That could work, I guess. There are examples through the years, I suppose. Ervin Santana. Chris Carpenter, of course. Sometimes, you roll boxcars. But it doesn’t seem to me there are too many who have had years as bad as Hochevar and then became useful starting pitchers.
Should the Royals try something drastic with Hochevar? Put him in the pen? Make him a set-up man and potential closer? Take away one of his pitches. Find some way to rework his schedule (his three good starts all came with five days rest rather than four — though his 5.95 ERA on five days rest hardly suggests that rest is the problem)? I don’t know the answer. I just know that there is a question. A big question.
Bill James said something a while ago that I thought was about as good a thought about bad baseball teams as anything I’ve heard. He said, “The future is not a plan.” And I think that’s exactly right. Every baseball team has a future. Every one. Every team has “prospects” — Baseball America next year will list off 30 for each team. Every team is loaded down with players in Class A who, if things go well, can emerge as the next great superstar. Every team has pitchers who could, and hitters who might, and catchers who should, and base runners who conceivably can. Every team in baseball.
And because every team has a future, it’s easy to fool yourself. It’s easy to talk about how things will get better. This is not always a bad thing. This is what gives fans hope every spring training. This is what keeps players inspired. This is what keeps baseball people going forward. And sometimes, rarely, a team even might fool itself into believing that it is better than the apparent talent and play at that higher level, at least for a while.
But … more often than not, fooling yourself isn’t much of a plan for survival. And thus, The Hochevar Principle: The future comes to all teams. Some teams wait for it. Those teams finish in last place a lot.
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Isn’t Casey Fossum 31 this year? Am I thinking of the wrong Casey Fossum?
I think Joe meants to say Jeff Fassero, not Casey Fossum.
I think by “13-hit, 0 walk game” you meant “13-strikeout, 0 walk game”.
I think Joe meant Jeff Fassero in that first mention of Fossum.
I can’t believe THREE people beat me to the Casey Fossum correction. We’re such nerds.
I’m guessing Tony Fossas fit into the confusion somehow.
I knew the first Fossum was wrong, I just couldn’t think of who the pitcher was.
I’m slacking.
Bill James is right, the future is not a plan and as you probably learned during your lecture at Fort Leavenworth, “hope is not a course of action.”
Not to go off on a wild rant here, but loser teams, like the Royals, see hope as an option, a valid course of action. They don’t attempt to influence the situation through their own actions or decisions, they simply hope Luke “figures it out.”
And that’s why the Royals are the Royals.
Ah, crowd-source editing. Nice.
One important thing to keep in mind here is that Hochevar hasn’t pitched as bad as his ERA would suggest–his FIP is only 4.84. He got some bad luck on balls in play, with a .326 BABIP, and got *horrible* luck holding baserunners, with only a 59% strand rate–that’s completely unsustainable. He also may have gotten some bad luck on fly balls going over the wall, as a 13.8% HR/FB rate is higher than previously in his career–but it’s also not completely unsustainable. No question that none of those are *great* numbers, but he’s definitely had some bad luck this year, and I’d say that between that and the really good signs (13-K 0-walk game, etc.), he really has the potential to be a good pitcher, and holding on to him would be one of the better moves KC has made, even if they make it for the wrong reasons.
I see you mentioned Chris Carpenter at the end. I think that if the Royals should hold out any hope for Hochevar, it is Carpenter’s 2000 season (when he was 25) that they will point to. 6.26 ERA in 27 starts (34 appearnces), 1.637 WHIP.
Of course, Carpenter was destined to suffer through a couple more mediocre seasons before he broke through as a great pitcher at the age of 29 with the Cardinals.
Joe was actually thinking of Jasey Fossaro, a genetically-modified left-handed reliever capable of pitching for thirty years as long as he never exceeds twelve pitches in any one outing.
In fact, to keep beating this drum, Hochevar’s FIP is lower than just about every other season on that list; I didn’t bother to check the “relatively young players”, but other than them, Ryan Drese in 2001 seems to be the only one with a lower FIP in a 6.50+ ERA season
I could have sworn Nate Robertson last year would have been on this list. He made 28 starts and had the worst ERA of qualified starter in the league. Alas, it was only 6.35. Of course, the Tigers started him this year in the last game of the recent Twins series, i.e. the game that could have clinched the pennant. I suppose that’s a better choice than Dontrelle.
["Should the Royals try something drastic with Hochevar? Put him in the pen? Make him a set-up man and potential closer?"] Pluck out his eyes and call him King Lear?
I take issue with your list, Joe.
You KNOW that ERA is a bad stat. It is incredibly context driven. You KNOW that home park matters, and era. So, why do a list of high ERAs?
If you want to make this point, the point of the post, a very good point, why do it like this? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to do it with ERA+?
The problem with Luke is that he is a ground ball pitcher and with the Royal’s stellar infield defense, he is not going to look good at all. The defense behind him could explain the difference between his FIPs and ERA. Either the Royals need to get some Defense behind him or trade him to Colorado which needs ground ball pitchers to keep the ball from flying all over that huge park.
Luke’s problem is between his (large) ears. He chokes in tough situations. The defense sucked this year no doubt. But it sucked behind Greinke as well. Hoch’s got skills to be sure. He needs someone to coach him how to use & trust his stuff. The positive side is that he’s shown that he CAN do it. But this quote from yesterday’s loss says it all about Luke’s mindset.
“I don’t think my stuff was that bad,” Hochevar insisted. “I only gave up (four) hits, but three of them were homers. The pitch to Delmon Young was down and in. It’s probably in 3 inches off the plate, and he hits it out.
“The first one to Kubel, it came back over (the plate) but it was still down. That early in the count, I’m still being aggressive. The second one was a first-pitch fastball, down in the zone, an aggressive strike.
“So I don’t know…I know my stuff is good. I know I’m good. It’s not a matter of that. It’s just a matter of making the adjustments and getting better.”
The kid still doesn’t get it. You can go back after any loss this season & find similar comments from him. EVERY single interview he always has some excuse or rationalization why things didn’t go his way, whether it’s the guy beat him on a good pitch or he’s tipping pitches or he missed just outside & the guy still hit it. It’s never his fault, it’s luck, fate or some other reason that he got beat. You can’t address problems when you don’t recognize & acknowledge them. He needs to go out every start with the attitude that he’s not going to give up a SINGLE HIT. Not that it’s ok to give up some hits & give up some runs, but that giving up a single hit is FAILURE. If he can recondition his mindset, I think he’ll be alright because he’s shown he’s got the ability.
Luke needs to grow up, take responsibility, stop rationalizing & realize that the other players are getting paid too, before he & his career becomes a statistic.
Several thoughts:
The Royals have a history of giving up on pitchers without switching them to another role first. I can cite Tom Gordon, who they insisted “needed to learn a 3rd pitch”. When that didn’t work, he was traded to a team who took one look at him, saw a guy with an above avg FB and arguably the best curve in the game, and promptly turned him into a very good closer. To lesser extent, Royals also tried and failed to make Jay Witasick a starter, gave up, and he went on to be a successful (albeit for only a couple of seasons) reliever elsewhere. There are other examples, but you get the idea. Main point is – I don’t trust this organization to know which role is sutiable for a pitcher, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, they lack the imagination to even try! I’ll spare my usual argument about trying Soria as a starter – but considering the state of this franchise, they are potentially making a big mistake by not at least considering it.
Second point – got a good chuckle out of this article, Joe – as it reminded me of a running joke I had whenever Lima’s ERA was shown on the K’s jumbotron – “Is that his ERA or his PH? Will he finish the year slightly acidic, or slightly basic?”
“Luke’s problem is between his (large) ears. He chokes in tough situations. The defense sucked this year no doubt. But it sucked behind Greinke as well. Hoch’s got skills to be sure. He needs someone to coach him how to use & trust his stuff. The positive side is that he’s shown that he CAN do it. But this quote from yesterday’s loss says it all about Luke’s mindset.”
I think this is correct to an extent, but I follow a different train of thought from there with it. If you look at Luke’s games, you see something interesting
May 12 – 8 ER in 2IP (7 in the 2nd inning)
June 18 – 6 ER (7R) in 4 IP (4 in 3rd, 2 in 5th without an out)
July 30 – 7 ER in 6 IP (4 in 5th, 2 in 6th)
Aug 15 – 6 ER in 4 IP (only small inning game, they scored 2, 1, 1, 0, 2)
Aug 31 – 6 ER (7R) in 5.1 IP (5 in 3rd)
Sept 6 – 7 ER in 3.2 IP (4 in 2nd, 3 in 4th)
Sept 23 – 6 ER in 5 IP (6 in 5th)
Sept 28 – 8 ER in 6 IP (5 in 7th without an out)
Oct 4 – 7 ER in 3 IP (4 in 1st, 3 in 3rd)
That is 61 ER in 39 IP; or a 14.08 ERA. Otherwise, he has 43 ER in 104 IP, for a 3.72 ERA.
It is almost like he holds no mental toughness at all, and when an inning starts to go bad, he implodes completely. Is he a poor pitcher? Heck no, the 3.72 in 104 innings says otherwise. But he needs to control those bouts of collapse if he is to ever succeed. Luckily for the Royals, that is something which can be corrected.
Taking him out of the rotation would be a mistake, he is much better then his superficial ERA indicates and this is something he can get over. The only problem will come if the Royals are incapable of helping him properly.
Stpat pointed out the excuses he gives after the fact, but I imagine the individual issues bother him much more then the perceived excuses would let on. I bet he doesn’t trust his stuff much at all, and those excuses might be things he (or the team) is trying to talk himself into believing as much as anyone else. You don’t collapse like he consistently has if you really trust your stuff.
If your team isn’t rich, and isn’t smart enough to have a chance on a low budget, selling hope is probably the best way to go. So perhaps they should fill the roster with enigmas who have high ceilings if they get it together, but low pricetags because they probably won’t. Maybe that’s why the Royals got Kyle Farnsworth …
10 years $20 million, yes or no?
was this the greatest thing ever you were promising earlier?
Good Article.
That David Cone season was a kind of unbelievable. It’s like he went from being one of the best pitchers in the A.L. to basically being out of baseball.
What’s even more interesting is that Cone’s team, (2000 Yankees) won the World Series that year.
I remember reading an article a few years back about Cone’s 2000 season being one of the worst season’s ever for a starting pitcher on a World Series Champion.
Two words: Homer Bailey. A few years younger, but also looked LOST until his last 9 starts of this year.
JoeyO,
I agree that he lacks mental toughness. It was a point I was leading to but failed to punctuate in favor of the overall point that he simply won’t take responsibility for his failures. You’re right of course that when he hits the rough-patches that every pitcher faces, whether that be of his own doing, the hitter or the defense behind him, he crumbles. It may be in his head as well because he’s acknowledged that his problems tend to center around 1 inning.
The Royals have A LOT vested in him in being an overall no. 1 pick and MUST do whatever it takes to help him reach his potential. He’s got to help himself as well & listen to his coaches & catcher.
A couple of thoughts. I don’t think trying to turn Hochevar into a reliever will work because he doesn’t have a dominant blow-you-away fast ball & he hasn’t demonstrated the ability to pitch under pressure which is a prerequisite for a reliever. I think that the Royals should invest in a special pitching coach that can work only with Luke, because it’s clear that McClure can’t get through to him. Another option is related to the Chris Carpenter comparison. Chris looked to be another so-so pitching prospect & had his problems with Toronto in the tough AL East. But when he moved to the NL, he became a perennial all-star/cy young candidate. It could be that Hoch’s never going to live up to the 1st round expectations in the AL but he might be exactly what some NL team is looking for. This would be a tough sell, but if Moore could somehow convince an NL GM to part with even one top-of-the line prospect for Luke, Moore should seriously consider it. Now I know that the odds are against it considering his horrid numbers, but Moore’s job would be to get that GM to overlook the face value of those numbers and focus on his potential & the fact that he’s still cheap. He could be a steal for some team & would garner the Royals a prospect that they might never get if Hoch fails in the tougher AL.
Make something out of nothing.
The “future” thinking sounds very similar to the local talk that the Chiefs would be improved this season.
“hope is not a course of action.”
Our contingency plan is OPTIMISM!.
“If you want to make this point, the point of the post, a very good point, why do it like this? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to do it with ERA+?”
Probably not – which is harder, 25 starts when the numbers say you suck, or 25 starts when you suck, but the numbers help disguise it?
Maybe Hochevar isn’t comfortable (or is more likely to tip pitches?) pitching out of the stretch instead of from the windup? His opponent tOPS+ splits are very striking.
bases empty tOPS+: 77
men on tOPS+: 129
Contrasted to Dice-K, whose famous for doing things like walking the bases loaded and escaping the inning with no runs allowed:
Matsuzaka tOPS+
bases empty: 115
men on: 83
I don’t know if I buy the whole, Luke’s unlucky and “should” regress to the mean argument. According to statcorner, bad luck/defense has cost him 9 outs this year, compared to 11 for Meche (also a groundball pitcher). But those 9 extra outs Luke somehow led to 21 extra runs allowed, while Meche’s -11 luck/defense only caused one extra run to be scored against him.
As for HR/FB ratio, I personally think that’s a number that can be controlled by skill if you have a large home park like the K. No coincidence that the top three in ERA in the majors (Greinke, Carpenter, Lincecum) also have three of the top four lowest HR/FB ratios. Greinke alluded to finding where he got beat a lot last year (I suspect via pitch F/X, given that Bannister was trying to fix his own HR problems at the same time using that tool) and ridding that problem from his repertoire. Result: Zack’s HR/9 dropped like a rock post ASB last year and has stayed down. Maybe not every pitcher has the tools to do that, but it suggests that logic can fix some problems if you execute correctly.
#1: funny stuff.
googling “jose lima’s wife” won’t ruin your day…but reading about his lawsuit on wikipedia might. talk about a guy with ups and downs…what a crazy u-turn from 1999-2000; he did give up 5 less hits in 2000–in FIFTY less innings. how exactly do you go from being “all-star good” to “all-time bad?” one of life’s great mysteries…
I was at the Monday night AAA Yankees vs Royals game that featured Hochevar. He pitched well into the 6th. The 7th is what got him and it’s the 7th inning that makes my point. While Hochevar is 75% to blame for his elephantitis type year — huge ERA, small % of success… get it?
It’s the 7th inning, in the Bronx with baseball’s most classless fans. And Luke has gone 3-1 on Francisco Cervelli, (the Yanks back-up, back-up catcher), next pitch, down-the-middle 91 MPH fastball off the right center field wall for a double. No action in the bullpen and he’s at 94 pitches. Next batter: Triple A SS Romero Pena fails to get a bunt down, twice (sound familiar?) and what does Luke do? He throws a fastball down the middle at 90 MPH for an RBI single to RF. Bullpen action? No. Mound visit? No. Instead, Luke walks the next to batters and now has the bases loaded with Robinson Cano due up (one of the two everyday players in the line-up — not counting Posada who was DH-ing). Hillman comes to the mound, not McClure. Then, there is bullpen action. I’m not sure what Trey said to Luke. Maybe he said, “Luke, just groove it in there and let Cano clear the bases so our bullpen’s inherited runners scored % doesn’t go up, they’ve had a rough year.” And, on cue (after going 2-0 in the count) Cano hits a bomb — and it wasn’t one of those 318 foot Yankee stadium RF homers that have turned Ragdoll Damon into a power hitter… this would have been out in a lot of ballparks. So, the 25% of the blame goes to Hillman. He has mis-managed the staff all year long. He’s left guys in way too long, putting the bullpen in situations that is most likely going to end badly.
Two other situations on Monday night was in the 3rd inning with runners at first and third for the Yanks and one out, Hillman applies the shift for lefty threat Eric Hinske, leaving a 50 foot gap between Betancourt and Gordon. What does Hinske do? Exactly what he should do, hit it right to the vacated hole where Betancourt should be. Instead of an inning ending double play and no runs scored, we have a 1-0 game and about 15 pitches added to Luke’s pitch count. The next mistake… for some reason Mitch Maier is playing about 15 feet deeper than he should in LF, against Brett Gardner, whose only homerun was an assisted inside-the-park homerun, while playing in a 314 foot RF. Mitch breaks back on the ball, when he should have come in on it and the ball hits Mitch in the wrong part of the glove — the outer part. I like Rusty Kuntz but, where was he on that at bat?
Bottom line is, there is a reason why bad teams stay bad and most of the time, it’s the bad coaching and mis-management. Just because Pujols is the best player to play the game in 40 years, doesn’t mean that LaRussa stops coaching him. Hate LaRussa or love’em, he manages the team and he maximizes his players potential. And KC hasn’t had a “manager” since Dick Howser.
I’m not a fan of the Royals, and we all know they have awful defense. Dead last in the AL in Putouts, Defensive Efficiency, tied for last in fielding percentage, below average in assists. That’s one stinky defense.
Suppose, as others have suggested, that Hochevar is indeed a ground ball pitcher. I’ve seen this with Derek Lowe for almost his entire time with the Dodgers. If the Dodgers made an error behind him, Lowe tended to unravel. And Lowe came to LA as a veteran presence, a key factor in the Red Sox’s breaking the curse.
Suppose Hochevar is your typical 26 year old sinkerball pitcher. His team can’t field behind him. He has it drilled into him, again and again, that his key to success with the Royals is to strike out a lot of batters. Not drilled into him by the coaches, of course, but by the fielders behind him and by the results on the field. So he strays towards the dark side. He tries to make perfect pitches for strikeouts and instead gets walks. He sees the team behind him fail to make routine plays and loses his cool.
I’m not saying I’m sure this is what’s happening to Hochevar. But I am sure that there are at least a dozen shortstops in the minor leagues whose glove could put them in the bigs but whose stick won’t, and every one of them would be an improvement for the Royals. I mean, some of the SS in AAA hit well enough but don’t field well enough to come up (but not many; most guys who fall into that category will move down the defensive spectrum), More of them field well enough but don’t hit well enough, and a few are stuck behind better players or being groomed, i.e. being held back until the ML SS is arbitration eligible and then the big club will release the ML SS and bring up the cheaper replacement.
I’m sure, completely sure, that the Royals *could* get decent defensive players for the middle of the field. They’d help their starting pitchers, they’d reduce the number of pitches per start, that would enable the starters to go deeper helping the bullpen, and maybe the Royals would need to wait a couple of years until their own Kung Fu Panda comes up to provide some offense, but isn’t that roughly what the post-Bonds Giants have done? The thing is, in the NL West the Giants are in third, but in the AL Central the Giants wouldn’t be waiting for a playoff game, they’d have *won* the division outright.
So given that the strength of the club seems to be starting pitching, and defense remains the underpriced talent in ball players, why don’t the Royals start trading/drafting for defensive greatness. I mean, it’s not as though they could have believed that Betancourt, uh, er…. Okay, I really feel for you, Joe. Sorry to have spoken up.
I can’t believe SEVENTEEN pitchers have done this. There are really only two types of pitchers I can even fathom getting enough starts to be so terrible.
1) A young/rookie pitcher who a team is letting take his lumps because they aren’t going anywhere anyway and they think the experience could do some good.
2) A really bad multi-year contract for a veteran. A team just hopes the guy will get better, and an outright release or demotion is likely not an option.
So how many of the guys Joe mentioned fit into one of those two groups? I’d hope all of them, since being that much below replacement is barely excusable.
@#33 Richard,
While I agree that there is validity to your point that the Defense has undermined Hochevar specifically & the team in general, I’m not sure if I would make the leap you are making regarding sacrificing offense for defense.
First, I TOTALLY agree that defense up the middle is vital. This year’s Royals were a case study in how a team can be really, really bad when you don’t have proper defensive support at SS & 2nd. However, in the American League, I’m not so sure that a team can afford to have 2 offensive black holes in their offense. You use the Giants as an example, & we’ll never know for sure, but I suspect that if they were to reside in the AL Central they might be in 3rd or 4th. At the risk of upsetting NL fans, I still think there is a gap in the overall talent level between the 2 leagues. The pitchers don’t hit in the AL & while there are teams in the NL that can match up with the best in the AL, I think there are simply MORE quality teams in the AL at this point in time.
So getting back to the point, I think in the AL, when you are already as weak offensively as the Royals are, they simply can’t afford to give both positions (SS & 2nd) to players that can’t hit their own weight. That is why Callaspo has played all season. His defense is awful but the Royals can’t afford to take his bat out of the lineup. Now if the Royals can upgrade its pitifully producing outfield & if Gordon or someone else can play good 3rd & provide some stick, then I’d be more than happy to put a defensive specialist at SS and/or 2nd and give up the offense. Problem is, David Glass is too cheap to allow Moore to upgrade the outfield & so we’re probably stuck with this pathetic lineup next season: DDJ -LF, Maier – C, Teahen/Bloomquist- RF, Butler – 1st, Callaspo/Aviles – 2nd, Betancourt/Hernandez – SS, Gordon/Teahen – 3rd, Olivo/Pena – C/DH. **Note: If Teahen is starting ANYWHERE for the Royals next season I will burn my Dayton Moore fan card & officially admit that he was a mistake. I’ve been reserving judgement on Moore because I think he’s been, in part, forced into the same stupid moves that Baird was due to Glass’ tightfisted approach to ownership. I’m patient but even a Royals fan has their limits. Teahen should NOT be in any team’s starting roster unless he’s spelling someone or there’s an injury. That I won’t forgive.
BTW — no one, no one has given any attention to the numbers Callaspo put up this year. 11 HR, 73, .300 avg. and 41 doubles from a guy who had 0 homeruns. Looks like the right side of the infield is fine. Now, just for RF, CF, SS, 3B, #3, 4 and 5 starter.
@#36 CoryMW,
Callaspo’s offense has been a bright spot, but his defense is atrocious. His affect on the team was net ZERO at best because he compromised our pitchers & his limited range was of chief concern contributing to our statistically horrid defensive squad.
If Gordon does not make it out of spring training on the big club & Aviles comes back next year, they really should consider putting Callaspo at 3rd. We can’t go through another season with his defensive shortcomings at 2nd.