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.

Really, Dick Kaegel?

Oh boy.

Dick Kaegel, beat writer for the Royals, posted his regular mailbag on MLB.com yesterday. The following question, which I will break down firejoemorgan style, was posed by Steven A. of Toms River, New Jersey:

Why is there so much negative talk about Kansas City acquiring Mike Jacobs?

Probably because the R's already have other options at first base who can play the position much better than Jacobs can. Were this a fantasy league, Leo Nunez for Mike Jacobs looks like a great deal. Real life, however, has this funny thing called "context."

The move makes sense. Fine, Jacobs' on-base percentage is low, but against right-handers (where KC's record was below-average) his numbers are not terrible (.315 OBP with 25 homers).

Contrary to what Mr. A. might have you think, a .315 OBP is not "not terrible." .315 is not terrible in the "Tony Pena Jr." sense, but it is well below the ~.336 league average for the AL. However, one point goes to him for indirectly pointing out that Jacobs's SLG was over .110 higher against righties.

Where are you going to find that type of production for $3 million?

Possibly here?? Maybe? I'm not saying that a Swisher trade was a possibility, but rather that we shouldn't act as if Jacobs was our only option on the market.

So Mr. A. -- I'm going out on a limb here -- is probably not a Royals fan (Maybe he's a fan of the world-famous Toms River little league teams?). It seems as if he's upset that those unappreciative Royals fans aren't accepting that they should be happy just to have a guy who can hit 30+ homeruns, OBP notwithstanding.

And maybe Mr. A is right. After all, the Royals' single-season HR record is only 36, held by Mr. Steve Balboni, whose stats in that 1985 season (.243/.307/.477) are not that far off from Jacobs's stats from last season (.247/.299/.514). But the issue here is not that Royals fans are delusional and had visions of landing a Mark Teixeira at 1B; it is rather the perplexing decision to go after a 1B in the first place when they already have some rising stars who can play the position better than Jacobs can.

What's funniest about this Mailbag post, though is Dick Kaegel's response. He makes a couple good points about how the Jacobs trade helps the Royals with their woeful splits vs. RHPs, but concludes his response to Mr. A.'s question with the following gem:

By the way, despite Jose Guillen's, umm, rambunctious season, his 20 home runs and 97 RBIs were nice numbers. You didn't hear too many folks whining about his .300 OBP.

Yes, Dick, you did. Or if you didn't, you must have had your head buried under a rock somewhere.

Seriously, how did you come up with this little fact? Have you been listening only to the Jose Guillen Fan Club? The Royals path to success has to be through development of the players they have signed with recent high draft picks, coupled with some intelligent free agency moves and trades. They cannot afford to pay players like Jose Guillen $12MM a year when they get on base exactly 30% of the time and rack up their RBI numbers largely because of their placement in the lineup.

It seems that if there is a market inefficiency in baseball, it is the undervaluation of on-base percentage and the corresponding overvaluation of home runs. We certainly need a player who has long-ball potential, but it would likely be more cost-effective to go after more affordable players with less SLG and more OBP.

Just as an illustration of this point, we can look at the 2008 Twins, who were 9 innings from reaching the playoffs. The Royals' AL ranks for OBP and SLG were 12th and 12th, respectively, out of 14 teams. The Twins, who are of comparable market size, were 4th and 10th. While OBP is certainly not the be-all, end-all of statistics, it is undoubtedly a valuable one for small market teams.

Plus, Mr. A., it is quite frustrating when your GM pays public homage to the value of OBP, only to have him make moves that defy his own logic.