STOP THE PRESSES

Zack Greinke just signed a 4-year extension with the Kansas City Royals.

I'm going to type that again.

Zack Greinke just signed a 4-year extension with the Kansas City Royals.

Honestly, I can't believe DM got this done. I suppose it speaks to his negotiating ability. I'm starting to think more and more that Rany was right when he said:

"And while all the motion this winter hasn’t produced a lot of movement, it has at least produced the perception of movement in the minds of a lot of people – and people who happen to play for the Kansas City Royals are likely to perceive the acquisitions of established major league players a lot more positively than you or I. I’m not sure the Royals are any better than they were at the end of last season, but if they look better to Zack Greinke, and that factors into his decision to sign a long-term deal, then suddenly you have to look at the acquisitions of Jacobs, Farnsworth, Bloomquist et al in a much different light."

I feel like this is exactly what happened with Zack. He saw that his team was making moves that appear to be moving the team in the right direction, regardless of whether they are objectively positive moves. Your average player won't know too much about sabermetrics or why Mike Jacobs' 32 HRs in a lineup are worth significantly less than one would think due to his horrendous on-base capabilities, but he does know that he hit 32 homeruns last year, and that stat shows up on the backs of all the baseball cards.

Suddenly, all of Dayton's confusing and downright questionable moves this offseason don't look as bad. They now start to look like bridge players to serve the dual purpose of encouraging KC's young talent that the front office is trying to make this team a contender again and fill stopgap roles until players like Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Kila Ka'aihue, Tim Melville, and others are ready to be everyday ML contributors (Kila is likely already there).

Dayton, you have regained the trust of much of the Royals fanbase. Congratulations on this move, and congrats to Zack.

One further note: Taylor and I met Zack and Kila at one of the Royals Caravan events. I will post pictures as soon as I get them uploaded.

Evaluating the Red Sox Off-season thus far...

In order to truly capitulate the "Et Cetera" portion of the "Royals Et Cetera" blog, this post focuses on analyzing the Red Sox' off-season thus far. Like the Royals' off-season, the Red Sox have not made any blockbuster moves. Actually, aside from the New York Yankees, very few teams have done much revamping in preparation for April. After failing to sign top echelon free agent pitchers C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Derek Lowe, two of whom signed with the Yankees, the Red Sox were outbid for arguably the top free agent position player on the market, Mark Texiera, who also now sports pinstripes. Clearly, general manager Theo Epstein could not go an off-season without any significant changes, especially since the Red Sox lost in game 7 of the ALCS to the division rival Devil Rays, who, by the way, brought a payroll nearly $100 million dollars less than the Red Sox to the World Series. With both the Yankees' endless supply of dough, and the Devil Rays' seemingly endless supply of young, cheap farm talent, the Red Sox need to do something. 

What did we do? We acquired some of the most broken and beat up talent the remaining free agent pool had to offer. 

Biggest off-season acquisition: John Smoltz. Arguably of the of the greatest right-handed pitchers ever. Granted, Smoltz only threw 28 innings last year due to a nagging shoulder injury, but in that span only allowed 8 earned runs, for a not-to-shabby ERA of 2.57. In fact, despite his age, Smoltz, who turns 42 in May, has yet to experience a drop in effectiveness. With Red Sox physicians rating Smoltz' arm as healthy, and with a base contract of only $5 million, the Red Sox have made a gamble here which could very well pay huge dividends this season.

Yet another ace fallen from the stars: Brad Penny. Another victim of a tender shoulder, last season Penny was limited to 17 starts while posting a not too attractive ERA of 6.27. Penny is a two-time all-star who has shown flashes of brilliance throughout his career. With a base contract of $5 million, Penny is basically an insurance policy for the struggles of Clay Buchholz, another injury to Josh Bechett, or the advancing age of knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. If he regains his stuff, Penny is a dangerous addition to the Sox pitching staff, and could even be used devastatingly in relief as a bridge to closer Jonathan Papelbon. 

The ultimate fourth outfielder: Rocco Baldelli. In the past a franchise staple for the Devil Rays, and seen by many as one of baseball's rising stars, Baldelli  was diagnosed with a mitochondrial disorder last March, but that diagnosis was more recently changed to channelopathy, a different cellular disorder that is less severe and responds better to treatment. Though his playing time has been limited over the last few years, he was a strong contributer to the Devil Rays at the end of last season and into the playoffs. And with a base contract of only $500 thousand, Baldelli is a low risk player with high rewards. He could spell J.D. Drew and David Ortiz against lefties, offer speed and stellar defense off the bench, and, hopefully, regain his confidence and become the player everyone thought he could be early in his career. 

The Red Sox have made a few other minor roster moves involving broke and battered players. including Josh Bard, a back-up catcher from the San Diego Padres who suffered both ankle and triceps injuries last year, as well as Takashi Saito, a closer from the Los Angeles Dodgers who missed significant time last season due to an elbow injury.

The one remaining gap for the '09 season remains the catcher position. Jason Varitek is still unsigned, as both sides have yet to make an agreement. However, there have been signs that Varitek will end up with the Red Sox with a significantly reduced salary. Despite his age and decrease in offensive performance, Varitek's presence is a important in guiding Boston's pitching staff.

Clearly, the Red Sox medical staff is going to be busy this season season. And those Sox fans hoping for a big blockbuster move to compete with the Yankees have surely been disappointed. But the Red Sox have taken a more conservative approach from years past. If just one or two of Boston's off-season acquisitions pans out according to plan, Boston will have significantly improved its team from last year, and will be in prime position to compete in the ultra-competitive American League East. 

An Offseason Overview (Thus Far)

So if this were a real blog in which actual people who weren't my girlfriend or close friends read my post (singular!) religiously, now would be the time at which I would apologize for taking such a long and enjoyable hiatus from discussing all things Royals.

But the truth of the matter is that the grand total of readers here can be counted on three fingers (and two if I disallow myself as a countable reader). Unless there are hoards of fans who are outraged that they have been deprived of Royals Et Cetera commentary (are Ponzi schemes also illegal for recruiting blog readers?), I will never apologize.

So with all that worthless banter behind me, let's do a quick analysis of Dayton Moore's offseason maneuvering and canoodling (I used it because it sort of rhymes).

I first want to thank David Glass, in spite of my own personal distaste for all things Wal-Mart, for generously opening up his pocketbooks in these tough economic times.

So, given this great economic opportunity relative to the sometimes-appallingly low payrolls the Royals organization has put forth over the years, Dayton Moore has decided to use an approach I have decided to call "Fuck it All, I want this team to continue Losing." We'll call it FAIL for short.

Under the FAIL plan, Dayton has used his strength (acquiring cheap middle relief and selling it high) to expose his weakness (overpaying for shitty-to-mediocre players rather than overpaying for one good player).

I am going to omit the Jairo Cuevases and Roman Colons of the world and instead focus on the major trades and acquisitions of this offseason thus far:

Traded RP Leo Nunez to Florida for 1B Mike Jacobs
Traded RP Ramon Ramirez to Boston for CF Covelli "Coco" Crisp
Signed FA RP Kyle Farnsworth
Signed FA RP Doug Waechter
Signed FA RP/SP(?) Horacio Ramirez

Now, let's quickly look at how much scrilla we're looking at, courtesy of Cot's:

Jacobs: Not sure yet, guessing somewhere around $3MM this year.
Coco: $5.75MM in 2009 (Club option for 2010)
Farnsy: $4.25MM in 2009, $4.5MM in 2010 (Club option for 2011... yeah right)
Waechter: $640k in 2009 (One-year deal)
H. Ramirez: $1.8MM in 2009 (One-year deal)

For those outgoing players, the following is the amount of salary we'll be dumping:

R. Ramirez: $397k
L. Nunez: $405k
For a Grand Total of: $802k

In other words, as a result of the major acquisitions and moves of the offseason, we'll be shelling out an additional ~$15.5MM in 2009 relative to 2008. And that's assuming that Jacobs gets only $3MM next year. Who knows if it will be more with the way we've been overpaying.

So... 15 million dollars. I wonder if there are any high-performance players who we could land with that kind of money?

Now, for all intents and purposes, the three players I just linked to (Bradley, Dunn, and Burrell) are all corner outfield or DH types. Adding any of them to the outfield would push Teahen to the 4th OF position, leaving B/D/B, DDJ, and Jose Guillen to fill the three spots. This would prevent any major logjam at 1B while still allowing us to monitor the progression of both Billy Butler and Kila Ka'aihue. If the free agent we acquired were to DH, we would still have an OF of Teahen, DDJ, and Guillen and a slightly bigger problem at 1B.

With the moves we've made, however, we now have a 1B disaster. Mike Jacobs cannot effectively play the position, nor has he shown any capability of getting on base consistently. His SLG numbers can be pretty good, but last year was the only full year of his career that was above .500. Coco Crisp may be an everyday CF, but he is not very far above a replacement-level player at that position. His career success rate for base stealing is 73%. This is right around the break-even line in terms of value to a team. Fall below that line, you're actually hurting your team by stealing bases at that success rate. Fall above it, you're helping. In other words, despite the talk about how Crisp can add some speed around the basepaths, his numbers don't really back it up.

I don't have the patience to get into the issue of paying Kyle Farnsworth that much money. I don't mind the Waechter deal -- he may be just as good as Farnsworth or better. It just makes no sense to sign Kyle to that kind of a deal. Just a waste.

PS: Happy 2009.