From Goldstein's chat today:

newsense (DC): What is the role of AAA in player development? It seems pretty clear that AA is used for player development while AAA is for spare parts but AAA is also a place where many players have at least one MLBplus level skill that could reveal a hole in a prospect's game.

Kevin Goldstein: AAA can be a great place for young hitters, as so many of those 'extra guys' who pitch at that level are there because they have good breaking stuff, but don't throw hard, so it can be a really good learning level for a prospect who needs to work on pitch identification.

• Alex Gordon plate appearances in AAA prior to 2009: 0
• Billy Butler plate appearances in AAA prior to 2009: 371

I know that's actually a pretty irresponsible use of stats. Give three of us five minutes each on the internet and we'll each find six guys who failed/succeeded without/with AAA time. I don't want to give the impression that some major component of Alex's struggles have been due to a lack of AAA time. (Actually, I'm in the camp that wants to deemphasize the idea that he's been a failure/bust/ball of suck altogether.) You can certainly point out that a player can also learn at the MLB level, though there seems to be an industry-wide consensus that its a different kind of learning.

I don't think a month in AAA in 2007 would have turned Alex into Evan Longoria, and it certainly wouldn't have prevented him from being injured this season. But I do think that it would have helped, helped in a specific way that we all can recognize.

The seeds of the frustrating 2009 and the not-fully-satisfying 2008 for Alex Gordon were sown in 2007. I think.

There's a larger issue here, and that is the weirdness of AAA in contemporary baseball. The Royals need to find a way to make AAA work for them, either as a place to stash extra bench type players, or as a place were players develop. They've managed to stash an occasionally helpful pitcher there, but not many. Maybe Kila is learning right now. I hope so.