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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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?

Our contingency plan is OPTIMISM!.