Home Run Derby

And so we begin our journey to preview 30 teams in 30 days.  Be sure to check out SkyKing’s preview too! 

We start in Kansas City (order was determined by team homeruns in 2007), a team that hit a paltry 102 Home Runs last year on its way to slugging .388 as a team.  Just to provide some contrast, the Milwaukee Brewers hit over two times as many dingers (231) and slugged almost 70 points higher (.456). 

Good lord it is hard to be a Royal fan.  It is even harder to talk about the long ball for a team that had only two players: John Buck (18) and rookie Alex Gordon (15) hit double digit Home Runs last year.

Surely the addition of Jose Guillen will add another double digit home run hitter to the team, but when your other big offensive addition is Miguel Olivo…you got problems.  Oh wait, they did add Alberto Callaspo too! Yep, I don’t know him either.  Apparently, he came via trade from Arizona. 

 Win Total Over/Under is 73.5.  I think the team will actually beat the mark.  I expect 76 wins for the year as I think the starting pitching will be a little better than expected.  Not to mention the number of times they will face Jon Garland this year will drop from 5 to probably 2 (He is 16-6 in 30 career starts against the Royals and 76-75 against the rest of the majors).  Oh, and there is that B-League pitcher, Johan Santana moving to the NL so they won’t face him 5 times this year either (He was 12-3 in 18 career starts).

Player most likely to have a Home Run Break Out Season: Mark Teahan.  Gee it is hard to peg any Royal for a “Break Out Season” in the Home Run category.  Alex Gordon would seem logical, but he was second on the team last year (albeit with 15). 

I will go with Mark Teahan.  He is decent with the bat (over a .350 OBP the past 2 seasons) but a 100 point drop in his slugging last year (.517 in 2006 to .410 in 20o7).  He did hit 18 Home Runs in 2006, but only 7 last year.  The 2006 number may disqualify him from being a true “Break Out” in the category, but I think he will prove two years ago was not just a one year blip.

Player most likely to have a disappointing Home Run Season: John Buck.  Let’s face it, this team is full of disappointment when it comes to Home Runs.  Jose Guillen is probably the only player that will hit 20, and even that isn’t a 50-50 proposition (He is Sky’s pick for this category.  But let’s face it, his last two full seasons he barely cracked 20 homeruns (24 in 2005 and 23 in 2007). So I don’t really see him as a disappointment even if he hits 15 this year. 

Buck, on the other hand, is a part of the future of the franchise.  His 18 Home Runs last year were a career high, as was his .429 slugging percentage.  But he strikes out about every 4 at bats, and batting in the six or seven hole of the vaunted Royals line-up will afford him absolutely no protection.  He only walks once in every 12 at bats, so his eye stinks (.297 lifetime OBP). I say he regresses to about 12 Home Runs this year.

Bold Statement:  Ron Gardenhire will pull a Tom Kelly and retire at the end of this season.  Oops.  Wrong team.  That is for tomorrow’s post.  I meant to say that they will not finish DFL in the AL Central.

Best Case Scenario for the Team:  uhhh…4th place in the Central…hmmmm….I guess it is wait until next year…..eerrr…2012.

Best Chance for Hardware (League Awards):  The only chance on this team has for hardware is if the team bus stops at the local Ace Hardware Store.  Even the cheapest award in baseball, the gold glove, is out of reach on this team.

Team Roundtable (Participants: Will McDonald at Royals Review; Clark Fosler at Royals Authority/MVN; Chris Rasmussen at Bugs & Cranks, Sky and the Greek):

Sky: Alright, guys, looking back after the season, what will be the Royals’ big story in 2008?

Clark: Unless he gets bogged down in trying to prove he can play first base instead of just sitting back and raking as a DH, look for Billy Butler to have a huge offensive year. The guy has won two batting titles in three full minor league seasons and hit .297 as a half-season rookie last year. This kid could easily hit .320 with 40 doubles and 15+ homers in 2008.

I also expect Alex Gordon to take the next step in his sophomore season and be an offensive force. He projects for a lower average and more homers than Butler, plus will play great defense at third and likely swipe 20 bases. He’s not yet the ‘next George Brett’, but he may well be on his way to being the ‘next David Wright’.

Nick: First, let me get this off my chest: I don’t recognize the name “David Wright”, because that bastard is dead to me. Maybe you can compare Alex Gordon to a different third baseman, like Eric Chavez?

I really think people will be suprised by the “relative” strength of the starting pitching. No, Meche, Bannister, Grienke and Hochevar won’t match up to the staffs of the Mets or Red Sox, but they will give consistently strong performances and will be in the top 5 in ERA for the AL — I’m talking just the starters, not the bullpen.

Clark: I agree that the starting rotation will be stronger than many think, particularly if Hochevar is ready sooner rather than later. You want a story that people are going to write at the end of the year? How about what an absolute great deal the Gil Meche signing was. In the first year of a new contract and first year as a staff leader, all Meche did was finish in the top 15 in basically every major pitching category. He set career highs across the board and seemed to really embrace being ‘the man’. Sure, his win-loss record was not good, but with a little more offense behind him in 2008, Meche might end the season as a twenty game winner.

Sky: Really, guys? As much as I love the Royals’ position players, the rotation scares me. Brian Bannister’s strikeout rate is awful and I doubt even his impressive baseball IQ can reproduce a .266 BABIP. Gil Meche still needs to win me over. Will his walk rate remain below 4 BB/9 and has he really morphed into a groundball pitcher? I’m as big a fan of Zach Greinke as there is, but even he’s no guarantee. And Luke Hochevar absolutely needs to make the rotation, if only to prevent another one of these guys from starting games: Kyle Davies, Brett Tomko, Jorge de la Rosa, and Brandon Duckworth.

Will: I also have to disagree a bit regarding the rotation. Even with Meche and Bannister having such solid seasons in 2007, the rotation as a whole still finished last in the AL in K/9 and 11th in ERA.

Chris: The Royals are, as usual, a work in progress. 2008 is not about 2008, but about the next potential winning team — which may or may not be in 2010. They have huge gaps. The potential of giving Tony Pena Jr. another 500 ABs could offset a net positive from Gordon, Butler, and/or Teahen. John Buck is a backup catcher posing as a #1. DeJesus isn’t good enough at the plate or in the field to be a defensive center fielder or an offensive corner outfielder.

Clark: I actually just spent a column defending David DeJesus. A lot of people, at times including me, have criticized DeJesus’ defense in center, yet he ranked third among AL center fielders in Revised Zone Rating last year, making as many out-of-zone plays as Torii Hunter and Grady Sizemore. Assuming his first three seasons are more representative of his offensive abilities than 2007, we’ve got a solid center fielder with a .800+ OPS.

Nick: Hey Clark, can you tell me… is David DeJesus any relation to former Cub ‘great’ Ivan Dejesus?

Clark: No, David is not related to Ivan, at least not in any reasonably close fashion. Around our house, he is known as Dave The Christ, except for my oldest daughter who simply refers to him as ‘hot’.

Harry Caray: DeJesus spelled backwards is “Sus-E-JED”.

Sky: I’ll stick up for Tony Pena, Jr. a bit. The average of STATS’ and BIS’ zone ratings puts him at +13 runs last year. Baseball-Reference’s Batting Runs has him at -27 on offense. So with his 5 run shortstop bonus he’s about halfway between replacement level and league-average. I’d call that ‘bad’, not ‘utterly disastrous’.

By the way, could someone please outline the plan for kicking Ross Gload out of the lineup? Seriously, who came up with that idea?

Will: For all the hosannas thrown at Dayton Moore, I remain troubled by his approach to building the lineup. We’ve not only traded for Ross Gload, but also voluntarily brought him back. Along with the acquisition of Pena Jr. and Miguel Olivo, I think it’s plain that there’s a blindspot or a wanton disregard for valuing OBP. But no worries, we’ll “do the little things” with a fervent ardor under Trey Hillman — cue 5,000 stories about how he’s brought a Japanese approach to the Royals — which will fuel our miracle run at scoring 750 runs.

Sky: I thought Hillman was SABR-friendly…?

Will: All I can recall in that regard is that he’s said that he values OBP at the top of the order. There’s also been quite a lot of chatter about being like the Angels and the deep, indescribable fear which is produced in the hearts of men when base stealers run wild.

Honestly, I’m not certain what the Gload signing was about, either, particularly given that it was a multi-year deal for a guy who is pretty much just an older version of three guys the Royals have in AAA already.

Chris: Sorry for the silence, guys, I just woke up from a nap. There’s another point I wanted to address — expectations. I mentioned planning towards 2010 earlier and I was actually being serious. It is easy to lose sight of planning for the future because of the Meche and Guillen signings, but this team isn’t even close to competing, particularly in the AL Central. The question to me is what Moore does long-term to address gaping organizational holes. We don’t have a terrific farm system due to some bad drafts at the end of the Baird regime. Personally, I’ll be taking a forward-looking view of this season (as I have for the last twenty).

Clark: That leads me to what Dayton Moore had done and is doing organizationally. He has restocked the pitching. While weak at the AAA level, the organization is now looking pretty strong on the mound from AA on down. What they do position-player-wise is still a work in process. Frankly, outside of last year’s number one pick, Mike Moustakas, you really cannot project anyone in the system as future major league star. That’s the primary reason you have Pena at short, Olivo and Gload on your bench and an overpaid Jose Guillen in right field: they were necessary evils brought on by hideous drafts which left the organization with no depth.

Getting back to a positive note, I do think Alex Gordon and Billy Butler will be above average corner infielders this year and well above average starting in 2009. That should help cover up some of the offensive holes. Frankly, what are the Red Sox? Some average to above-average players sandwiched around Big Papi and ManRam.

Will: Forget Manny and Ortiz. Lets have a regular player out-OPS Dustin Pedroia first. Even if Gordon and Butler become stars, the Royals still can’t win with a stars and out-machines approach.

Sky: Great point. The Royals might have the front-line hitting and pitching talent to stay out of the AL Central basement, but they don’t have the depth to scare the Tigers or Indians.

Next up: The Santana-less Minnesota Twins.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 1:20 am and is filed under 2008 MLB, 30 Teams in 30 Days, Royals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.