Monday, February 24, 2014

I guess that was the offseason

If you had announced to us here at the PBR before the offseason had started that the Royals would trade a reliever for a cheap undervalued upgrade in RF, sign a free agent pitcher to a four year deal and then give another four year deal to .300-hitting 2B, there would have been almost no way in which this wasn't going to be a monumentally better team starting in 2014. However, once you throw the names out there you realize that hibernating during the offseason was actually a good decision. It's not that they weren't good signings in some contingency based scenarios, it's that there wasn't one really overwhelming move in the whole lot (i.e. getting them to 90 wins). Since we here at the PBR are just waking up from Royal's Winter Hibernation we'll leave the "if Eric Hosmer turns into a superstar and Moose bounces back and Alcides is not the worst hitter in the league and Billy and Alex remember to how hit doubles and if Kyle Zimmer becomes Michael Wacha then we'll win the World Series" talk for another day. For now, we still are left wondering how any of the moves this offseason improve the team???

The Bruce Chen Question:  There are so many different questions to ask when talking about B Chen that it's hard to focus. Lets begin here: is it possible for B Chen 2014 to outperform B Chen 2013? Not a chance in hell. 2013 B Chen was the best version of B Chen that B Chen can be. A swing starter who comes on at the end of the season to give your team a boost while desperately trying to get into the playoffs. An almost 40 year old soft tossing lefty giving you 130 innings of 3.27 ERA. These things aren't easily replicated, and most certainly won't be bested this year. So the short answer is, NO, he doesn't improve the team from 2013. But the next question is: without him were the Royals worse? Here is where it gets confusing, specifically because signing Chen led to the release of Emilio Bonifacio. Lets take a look at part one first, because this really becomes a question of team insurance policies. Before Chen you had Shields, Guthrie, Vargas and two of the Duffy/Davis/Ventura/Zimmer/Hochevar/et. al. grab bag that was headed for Spring Training. We would love to say that obviously you give Wade Davis another chance, hope for Duffy to put it together and then Ventura gets the first crack after someone gets injured and/or leads the league in ERA. You were already spending $5 mil on Davis and you NEED to develop one pitcher from the organization eventually, so this seems like the proper course of action. However, we'll give Dayton some credit here and say that things never quite work out the way you want, especially with pitchers. Fine, sign Bruce Chen or more appropriately the Blue Cross and Blue Shield SP Full Coverage Plan. No problem, wait one problem. This resulted in Moore dropping their slightly cheaper Do-It-All Back-up Infielder High Deductible Coverage Plan and paying a $600K penalty for having pre-purchased it. So we have to ask: is B Chen really more valuable than Bonifacio? If he does what he did last year, probably. If the current 3B, SS and 2B all play 150+ games while hitting at career high levels, then Yes Bonifacio wasn't needed. If Omar Infante misses as many games as he did last year, maybe not so clear. If Alcides Escobar gets Jeff Francouer Depression Syndrome, definitely not. So now we have an extremely murky answer; Chen only makes us better if at least Duffy and Wade Davis suck AND the infield stays healthy and productive AND Chen is his same old decent self. This was the last and final significant offseason move in what can only be described as a quantity over quality strategy from Moore. Take this under consideration: Chen + Guthrie + Vargas + Hochevar + Davis = $30 mil. Carlos Beltran + Matt Garza will make less money this year. So it will be interesting to see if those previously mentioned insurance policies actually pay off or if they just end up taking up space that could be given to someone making 10% of their salary and the Royals are yet again left a few wins shy of the wild card.

The Omar Infante Question: As the writer of a blog that has dedicated hundreds, possibly thousands, of words to complaining about Chris Getz taking up a roster space over the past couple of years you would think we're ecstatic about this signing. Unfortunately, it seems likely to disappoint, even in the short term. The bottom line for me is that we outbid the Yankees for him, this being a year in which the Yankees spent almost half a Billion dollars on free agents. So I have to question how valuable a player is when the Yankees aren't willing to spare a few extra million on him when they didn't have a true 2B option AND spent that much money. That being said, I have to take the fact that almost no other team in baseball wanted Emilio Bonifacio as a pretty clear indication that he wasn't going to repeat his performance at the end of last season. Ultimately, the real question to be asked is how many games will Infante play? I'm setting the over/under at 135. Over = best Royals 2B since Alberto's Callaspo's Career Year. Under = bad sign of things to come. It's not that it doesn't make them better its just that he is a 30-something 2B who only played in 118 games last season, albeit 118 very good games. I would be the least surprised person in the world if he starts the season on the DL, still he could probably outperform Chris Getz while injured and not playing.

The Aoki Question: I would have loved this deal sometime last season when Jeff Francouer was making us cry. However, on a per game basis, David Lough and Justin Maxwell were one of the best RF combos in baseball. The possibility of David Lough repeating his Superman defensive levels and hitting just enough might have been slim-to-none. However, at least one other team in baseball thinks its possible. In the end, the Royals basically swapped David Lough for someone who has done what David Lough did last year for two full seasons (the difference is that Aoki walks more whereas David Lough has played better defense, but both come out as slightly above average RFs). Again, we must admit, for a Blog that has spent entirely too much time worrying about who hits leadoff to complain about trading for a solid leadoff hitter seems a little counter intuitive. So on the face of it we have to say that yes, the team should be better. However it will be difficult for Aoki to outperform the Lough/Maxwell platoon numbers from last year - no matter how unlikely it would have been for them to repeat those numbers - and that leaves you wanting more from a RF (nobody mention his name). The PBR proposed a way for the Royals to take a giant step forward in the outfield, but the Royals took what might amount to lateral move with slightly more predictability. So while this trade looks like a smart play, its hard to see the Royals making up ground on the Tigers (Oh yeah, and the Indians) with a RF who has 18 career HRs (and that was in Milwaukee).    

The Vargas Question: It never fails, the classic Dayton Moore jump-the-gun offseason strategy. He just can't help himself. I can imagine Sports Agents sitting around playing drinking games based on how many times Dayton Moore calls before the Winter Meetings. Now, more than three months later, Ervin Santana still hasn't signed and the Royals might not even get the draft pick he was supposed to bring them. The Royals thought he was going to be too rich for their blood and now he might go for less than Vargas. After seeing them sign Bruce Chen for nothing, Chris Capuano and Paul Maholm go for nothing, etc., etc., you have to wonder why this was necessary. Did Dayton do it just because he could? Is he the guy who buys things just because they're on sale? How many bad suits does he own? Does he have a time-share in every state? It's hard to see how they couldn't have done better. More importantly, it's nearly impossible to see him replacing the innings that Santana gave the Royals so even at the time he clearly didn't make the team better. Obviously Ervin Santanta wasn't worth $80 mil, he might not even be worth the Money Vargas got, but this is just another example of how Dayton's lack of patience rarely ever pays off. The chances of The Royals wanting Jason Vargas on their team four years from now are so slim that I wouldn't take 100 to 1 odds. However, we must again temper this by saying that it is hard to complain too much about paying a pitcher capable of giving you 200 league average innings less than $9 mil per year. This move, more than any, shows that for now Dayton (and ownership) are content to be just as good as last year and will leave the rest to pixie dust and four leaf clovers.