Last week, we took a look back at the changes Dayton Moore has made to the big league roster since taking over during the 2006 season, specifically the position players. Part II examines the pitching staff, which has been subject to a much more radical transformation.

Dayton Moore inherited a bad team in 2006. The Royals would only win 62 games, which was actually their highest win total in three season. The '06 Royals couldn't hit, were bad defensively and were terrible on the mound. Although Moore's earliest moves were aimed at upgrading the offense (Gathright, amazingly, and Shealy) it quickly became apparent that his top priority was building a pitching staff. And for good reason, for while the offense was bad (12th in the AL in runs scored), the '06 pitching staff was legitimately worthy of the label "historically bad".

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The State of the Battle

Despite the Royals stealing away beloved ex-Mariner Gil Meche prior to the 2007 season, the Mariners have been the stronger side in recent years. The Royals went 3-5 against the M's in '06, 3-6 in '07 and are only 1-1 against the coffeekind this season. Thanks to their success, the Mariner hordes have pushed eastward into Thermopolis and now claim most of, if not all, of Hot Springs County, Wyoming, the historical flash point between both sides. According to all observers, the Royals are losing ground daily, and are the weakest they've been in Wyoming in years. Using both human intelligence and satellite data, Royals Review was able to construct this map.

People are dying right now in Central Wyoming.

Fremont, Natrona and Converse counties are not fun places to be right now, especially for Royals loyalists. Johnson County, always susceptible, due to a large number of flannel outlets, was one of the first battleground counties to fall, and in fact, may remain in Seattle's hands for a generation. Crucially, we know that the teal and silver are in country in northwest Albany County, the last buffer between Seattle and the Capital. We believe this territory is safe at the moment thanks in large part to a shipment of Mike Aviles jersies that arrive via helicopter late last week.

With a strong showing this weekend, it is believed that the Royals will be able to quickly recapture Carbon County's valuable mineral deposits, which have been critical in feeding injured pitcher John Bale. Natrona County, featuring Casper, is a top priority for the Royals, but may not be salvageable in the short term. Vaguely metropolitan, Casper's citizens have embraced the Mariner lifestyle and are believed to be harboring exiled leader Bill Bavasi.

Looking Ahead

While years of failure have led to a large loss of territory, the near-term prospects are not entirely bleak. In their arrogance the Mariners have declined to establish any radio affiliates in Wyoming, refusing to take the advantage of the opportunity left when the Royals lost their crucial Sundance station. Moreover, with the Mariners currently mired in last place and the owners of a 36-56 record, it is probable that large pockets of Mariner support are much more vulnerable than they superficially appear. Stealing Meche remains a valauble propaganda plank and has been recently augmented by the seduction of conversion Horacio Ramirez.. All efforts will be made to insure that Raul Ibanez -- preternaturally a fence-sitter in this fight -- does not leave with the Mariners this weekend. Finally, a well-placed tactical linedrive off the elbow of white hero Willie Bloomquist this weekend may severely undercut the allegiance of leaners across central Wyoming.

Problematically however, with opportunity also comes pressure. With all seven remaining skirmishes set to take place in Kansas City, a Royal failure to maximize results against a bleeding Mariner squad may not result in additional lost territory directly, but could nevertheless represent a substantial loss in opportunity cost. Kyle Davies is reportedly already emotionally distraught over the responsibility riding on his shoulders with Sunday's start, and it is likely that many of his teammates feel the same way as well.

• Not a terrible effort (4 ER in 6 IP) from Gil, but not anything to be excited about either. Meche is nothing if not frustrating, at least in the eyes of this 'umble blogger. I know he's valuable, even if his ERA is below league average this year, simply for the innings and stability. Still, he leaves me feeling like he's the lamest #1 starter ever.
  

• Oh, and Mike Aviles has produced twelve outs the last two games.

• But hey, Trey's hackers managed ZERO walks against one of the wildest starters in the American League. Cabrera only needed 105 pitches to complete the game, despite allowing seven hits. Incredible.
  

The Royals went 10-19 in May, thanks in large part to an offense that was among the worst in the American League. The pitching staff, after a flaming hot start however, was not blameless either, as Royal hurlers have struggled for well over a month now. While overall the team's pitching numbers have been trending downward for a long time, the Royals nevertheless posted a slightly better monthly ERA in May (4.41) than they did in April (4.78).

Before looking at the May splits, it's worthwhile to take a look at the starter/bullpen breakdowns for the entire season.

There's a lot to digest there, and I didn't even include K/9 or HR data, for the sake of clarity. First, it looks like the starters are getting killed by BAA (bad defense?) because their control of the strikezone is surprisingly good, second-best in the AL in fact, behind only Oakland. The bullpen's K/BB number is also good, although only fourth best in the league, but they've also allowed fewer hits, contributing to a better ERA. Second, I'm stunned to see that the best Royal bullpen in decades has already fallen behind league average, a shocking development that does not reflect well on Trey Hillman's usage patterns, considering the number of good options he has to work with. Bullpen management is perhaps the area in which the manager has the most impact on a team's performance, and to this point, it would be hard to say that Hillman has done well there. In Hillman's defense (somewhat), the bullpen has been hit hard by the longball (18 allowed, fourth most in the league). Overall, the Royals rank 6th in strikeouts, rarefied air for a franchise that has spent most of the decade finishing somewhere between 12th and 14th, year after year.

Before we head-off to the land of individual performance (great wines there, by the way, but the roads are terrible) let's take a look at the staff numbers month by month:

Again, since the beginning of April was so superb, I don't think anyone would guess that actually, the pitching improved across the board in May. One final note on the overall pitching numbers: the Royals have only allowed 10 unearned runs, which is one of the lowest totals in the AL. This either means the Royals have been lucky in how they've timed their errors or that the staff has actually been a tick better than some AL staffs who have hidden lots of bad pitching behind "unearned" runs. The Twins for instance, have allowed over 30 invisible runs, at least in terms of ERA.

Here are the May numbers for the starters, sorted by innings pitched:

Gil Meche put in a very quiet, effective May, truly anchoring the staff, but his gains were offset by meltdowns by Bannister (although his nice Sunday start is obviously not in these numbers) and Tomko. Hochevar and Greinke were so-so, although I'm not quite sure how Greinke allowed so many runs, in spite of a lowish WHIP and decent strikeout numbers. Also, take a look at Banny's numbers: he's been striking out more guys than the mythology around him (and his detractors) would suggest. It's not as if he's 2004 Jimmy Gobble or anything.

And about that guy Gobble, here are the May reliever numbers, sorted again by IP:

Wow, four homers allowed by Peralta, eh!?!? Was anybody expecting to see Ramirez's May ERA that high? Like a few staff pitchers, his overall ERA still looks low, because he logged all those 0.00 ERA innings to start the season. It's fairly clear that Ramirez torpedoed the pen this month, and the sooner Hillman realizes the league may be catching up to him, the better. Likewise, did anyone notice that Yabuta had a decent month? Or that Nunez, whom I sorta thought was fading -- posted a 0.84 ERA in May?

Baseball Prospectus keeps a stat called Leverage, which keeps track of how important the situations a reliever's usage have occurred in. Guess which reliever has the highest leverage score in Hillman's pen? Brett Tomko, of course. As for more used relievers, the leverage rankings go like this: Nunez, Soria, Ramirez, Mahay, Gobble, Nomo, Peralta, Yabuta and Musser. Ideally, at the end of the season, we'll see Soria #1 (not third) and possibly Mahay higher in the chain.  For what it's worth, according to BP's numbers Yabuta, Gobble, Tomko and Peralta have all been below average relievers, and Tomko & Peralta have also been below replacement level. Oh, and Nomo, of course, but he's gone.

Lastly, a word about defense. BP's defensive efficiency stat rates the Royals as the 10th best defense in the American League, with a D-Eff of 0.699 , i.e., 69.9% of the balls in play have been turned into outs by the defense. The Rays lead the league at 72%. The Mariners are last at 68.2%. (Again, the closeness of these numbers should tell you something about the essential realities of the game: 30% of balls in play become hits, give or take a percent.) According to the numbers at the Hardball Times, the Royals have the second-worst defense in baseball however, just ahead of the Mariners.

Last night was apparently one hell of a game to miss. I remember, while watching the Celtics-Pistons post-game, seeing the final score on the ESPN Bottomline and saying something to the effect of "that stinks." It looked like it had turned out to be a close slugfest, one that, given it went into extra innings, could have gone either way. It was only when "KC Greinke - 8.1 IP, 3 ER" scrolled across the bottom of the screen that I began to suspect that it had been a painful loss, and even then I really didn't know until I checked the box score this morning. ESPN, as everyone here knows, would prefer to show the Red Sox failing to hit Erik Bedard all night than show Twins-Royals highlights. However, I think that might be a good thing in this particular case. Anyhow, the "earned run" tag meant I had no idea exactly how much the Royals had been leading by going into the ninth. Of course, that Greinke was still in the game indicated that they had been leading, and so my first thought was that Soria had actually had a bit of a meltdown.

Of course, that's not the way it went. You all know as well as I know what happened in the ninth inning last night, with Ramon Ramirez getting singled out of the game and giving way to the now-thoroughly dejected Joel Peralta.

One thing that would not change this night, though, was the despair felt by Peralta -- not for himself, he said, but because he let his teammates down.

"I won't sleep tonight, for sure," he said.

Yes, that definitely sound like a pitcher who gave two home runs in the span of three betters to heavily contribute to what I have little doubt will be the Royals most memorable loss of the year. I should make it clear I'm not attempting to get everyone blaming manager Trey Hillman rather than Peralta by evoking pathos, as I find it hard to blame Hillman for Peralta not being able to get Craig Monroe out. Really, with Nunez now hurting, and with Soria having pitched two games in a row, the decision last night came down to Mahay, Peralta, Yabuta, or keeping Ramon Ramirez in the game. Ramirez wasn't pitching well, so it's easy to see why Hillman turned elsewhere. Yabuta has a 6.00 ERA with no good peripherals. Craig Monroe historically hits lefties better than righties, to the tune of more power and a better OBP. Ron Mahay is left-handed, so assuming Soria wasn't ready to go, Peralta was left as the best choice for a high leverage situation. He blew it, he knows, let's move on.

We've already discussed this game at length, anyway. I'm just pointing this out because I've been critical of Trey, and others here have been a lot more critical of our fearless leader, but I don't think he takes the fall for the ninth inning. You can, as loyal2sdad pointed out, make an argument that Hillman should have just pitched either Peralta or Ramirez through the whole inning. You can also wonder why Greinke was allowed to start the inning with such a high pitch count and a 5-run lead. But either way, it's speculation that really isn't an indictment of the moves that were really made. If we all want something to complain about in regard to Hillman, it's much more debatable whether Peralta should have remained in to pitch to Justin Morneau with Mahay on the roster. Or the Gload in the outfield thing.

But I didn't write this whole thing to bury Hillman anyway. I didn't write to praise him either, because this entire team is in a funk that you usually only see once a year. If you want the bare bones consolation, we will probably go the entire year without the Royals ever playing this badly for this long. Feel better? Yeah, me neither. Maybe I'll just shut up about last night and get to the stuff I really wanted to touch on.

Notes on the Red Sox-Royals Series

Thanks to the heroic intervention of the MLB Extra Innings package, very soon I'll have the opportunity to follow more KC games without having to enlist the highlight reels and gameday. However, the four game set between the Red Sox and the Royals allowed me for the first time this year to actually see more than one Royals game in a row. It was pretty cool despite the obviously disappointing results. And yes, they were disappointing. Those of you who have been on this blog for awhile are well aware of my "split loyalties," but I was really hoping that the series would be a split so both "my teams" could have their moments. Well, I suppose I don't feel that bad that the Red Sox kind of beat up the Royals now that the Royals are getting beat up by everyone, if that makes sense to anyone. Anyhow, I have other places to go in this article, so onto the stuff that I jotted down during the series:

1. The improvements that Alex Gordon has made over last year were evident through the entire series, during which he was one of the few Royals offensive players who distinguished themselves. He looked more patient, more comfortable, and more disciplined than when I got to see him play last year.
2. Gil Meche looked as if he was starting to get turned around, K'ing 9 over seven innings and taking the hard luck loss in the second game of the series. Say what you will about the opposing points of view in the field of pitch count general pitcher workload research, but I think that poor Meche was suffering from a 200-inning, high-pitch count hangover that seems to finally be clearing up. It's like that time where I drank Ice 101 during finals week and didn't begin to function until approximately 2 PM the next morning. My god, that stuff is evil. Thanks to my friend Buddy, who recommended taking more shots of it than were necessary.
3. Joakim Soria - great man, or greatest man? Even though Soria only appeared in one game...and stuggled with his control...in the rain, I could still see the awesome stuff that he has. I was sitting next to a rather skeptical Red Sox fan during his outing, who made fun of me for saying that Soria had great control because Joakim walked two people in the rain. I had a good chuckle when Soria escaped the jam and then Mike Timlin struggled with his control and walked one in the rain on his way to creating his own save situation in the ninth. Funny stuff.
4. Contrary to whenever I saw him in the "highlights" earlier in the year, Jose Guillen had his timing down and more closely resembled the decent power hitter he's been in the past. You know this, but the difference was clearly visible.
5. Brett Tomko is not a victim of bad luck when it comes to his hittablility. After seeing his stuff, I don't think he's got enough to keep his BABIP at league average. I just bring this up because, other than his H/9, he looks like he is underperforming his peripheral numbers. After seeing how mediocre his stuff is, I don't think he's playing by the "normal" .290-.300 BABIP rule.
6. Billy Butler is sitting too far back in his stance, and almost never seems to get his weight forward into his swings. I know I'm not a scout, but it's odd to see a man that muscular trying to fight off pitch after pitch. In any case, he's a data point against the pitching coach. He looked completely lost in the Sox-Royals series.
7. Ross Gload is done. He doesn't look capable of hitting major league pitching. His numbers are terrible, and he's older than you think.
8. Leo Nunez and Ramon Ramirez both looked impressive in their outings. It's hard to believe that Nunez has come full circle and become a very good reliever, but he has. Ramirez looks like a good find, as if you look at his line in 2006 he was quite good before getting hurt last year.

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Since the Royals apparently  lead the American League in Christians , can someone step up to the plate (pun intended) and do something here?

But as a Christian man, he had to, instead, follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. And it was compelling him to Kansas City—miles and miles from Comfort Zone.

15-1.

Your Gil Meche ERA update is 8.00.

Tonight's 15-1 meltdown caps a four game stretch in which the Royals have been outscored 41-8, dropping their record to 9-11. One week ago, the Royals were 8-5. That was a long time ago, back when Trey Hillman's leadership and attitude had transformed the Royals, a city, even the entire Midwest.

Has Trey Hillman sewed up manager of the year yet?

-Dom Amore, Hartford Courant

New Royals manager Trey Hillman appears to be having an effect, second-year third baseman Alex Gordon is producing, and young pitcher Zack Greinke has been eye-popping. Hillman brought a jarring change to the Royals this spring. If drills were not done right, they were done again. The diligence has paid off. According to several scouts, the most noteworthy aspect of the Royals' fast start was their crisp play. They did not toss away outs on the bases or give opponents extra outs.

-John Rawlings, The Sporting News

Hillman had the Royals running more this spring (sound familiar, Yankees fans?) in the hopes that they could manufacture more runs, and he'll motivate his players by being both energetic and approachable. In time, he'll make the Yankees regret that they never promoted him to their big-league coaching staff.

-Ken Davidoff, Newsday

He brought a jarring change to the Royals this spring. Drills ranging from situational defense to bunts were done with fervor. If the players did not get them right, they did the drills again and again. If Hillman saw a return to the sloppy habits from recent seasons, he pounced.

The diligence has paid off.

-Gerry Fraley, The Sporting News

(after two pages of Hillman=fundamentals God stuff)

He will not apologize for who he is, the methods he uses or what he expects from his team.

He will continue to stress fundamentals and respect of the game. And he will ask for a lot -- even now, he talks about preparing for a 181-game schedule, counting every postseason game possible -- and he will give a lot. In spring training, he was in the park regularly at 5 a.m. for a minimum 12-hour workday.

-John Donovan, SI.com

And the epic story by Posnanski, done in vignette style, that set the whole shooting match off. The fundamentals trope would be picked up by nearly everyone else, although the chair's bit was left behind, either as a sign of respect, or because it would be too obvious to rip off, or because it was too maudlin.

“Men,” he says, “pick up your own chairs and put them away.”

He watches them closely — it’s a Hillman test. He wants to see if any players are rolling their eyes, if any are grumbling, if any feel too important to pick up his own chair. This is a Trey Hillman moment, a small opportunity to remind everyone involved that the Royals are going to be a working-class team, a lunch-bucket kind of a team, a nobody’s-too-big-to-bunt-or-move-over-the-runner kind of team. The players pick up their chairs, and Hillman smiles. This is exactly the kind of team he wants.

[...]

Every manager talks about baseball fundamentals, but they are the lifeblood of Trey Hillman’s feelings about baseball. He may or may not be engaged by a conversation about Ryan Howard’s home-run power or which pitcher has the best stuff in the American League. But if you start talking about how a team should play the double steal with two outs, he will talk to you for hours about that.

[...]

A few years later, he went to manage in Japan. He tried to make things easier for the players — he cleaned up their locker room as mentioned, he shortened their workouts, he tried to joke with them and take some pressure off them. The team played better. The problem was Hillman was not really getting through. The Japanese players wanted a manager who would work them, challenge them, inspire them. So he changed, and he mixed in a little extra toughness, and they won the Japan Series.

The only fundamentals that matter are scoring runs and preventing them, and the Royals haven't been very good at the former for this entire season, and the latter for the last week.

If you look at the Royals a different way, putting aside our optimism and the heady days of the hot start, you still see the same problems: the offense isn't good at anything, not even hitting for average, which is it's stated goal, Hillman's in-game strategies have been brutal, and the pitching staff is built around three guys with middling K-rates (Meche, Banny, Greinke) who will always be prone to giving up too many home runs. The Royals have a nice bullpen, which they under-utilize, and they don't especially play good defense. Other than that, it's wonderful.

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Sorry, this post was originally longer, but I lost portions of it last night when RR crashed.

One of the old arguments I used to have with my girlfriend was about whether following sports was somehow better than following celebrities, or being a hardcore movie buff, or whatever. It wasn't contentious or anything like that, just something that became a discussion. In defense of sports, which actually most of the time I find to be quite boring and even annoying, I trotted out the standard line that the games, unlike a television show, aren't scripted, which always brings us back. In this case, I consider that to be a cliche that happens to be true. And it's hard to find a more random game, at the microlevel, than baseball.

We got a taste of that yesterday.

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    The Royals are considered by most to be a team in rebuilding mode right now. I'm sure that there are those who disagree with that idea; those who believe the Royals will never win the world series, or those who have already lost faith in Dayton Moore's ability. But the fact remains that most of those who actually care look at the team and see a real rebuilding program, one that was not really seen during the Baird era. Naturally, we're all inclined to see this is as a positive thing. Really and truly, it is nice to see the franchise have some direction. However, looking towards 2008 the near future of the Kansas City Royals, there are some things that are bound to make you slightly nervous. I am not talking about some "anything can go wrong" feeling, I'm thinking more specifically on this one. And do not mistake this for a condemnation of the Royals future chances, because it's anything but that. I am not a negative person, I think, when it comes to what I think the Royals can accomplish in the next three years.

    One of the other teams that I follow throughout the season and the off-season is the Baltimore Orioles. I am, as I'm sure you all know by now, a Red Sox fan tried-and-true, but I was born in Maryland, deep in Oriole country, and I remember the O's from the days when Cal Ripken, Mike Mussina, Chris Hoiles, and other heroes of my single digit years played. I vaguely remember the change over from good old beer-conducive Memorial Stadium to the white wine park of Camden Yards. So if you're wondering what a Red Sox fan cares about the fortunes of the Orioles, that's the reason right there. I think that if you're such a fanatical baseball fan like me, you don't forget the team you saw the first time you went to a ballpark, or the team you saw on TV almost everyday.

    The relevance of the Orioles to this discussion is this: we, the Royals, are not the Orioles. We're surely both rebuilding teams, and we certainly both lost 90+ games last year. We've both got some good young players that provide hope for the future of the franchise. With the exception of the Royals' blip in 2003, these are both franchises that have fallen on hard times. Now, it looks like things are starting to turn around for both franchises, as the rebuilding programs seem real for both teams. But again, the Royals are not the Orioles, and not in the same situation. The Orioles, with the trades of Miguel Tejada and Erik Bedard (as soon as it goes through), have officially blown up the team that wasn't winning and are attempting to start again with the prospects they're getting from those deals, a few good internally developed prospects, and hopefully without the old guard that remains signed on for a couple more seasons. That's a rebuilding program in year one, really, and while the prospects might turn out to bring the O's back to relevance faster than one might think, there's really not much of a timetable on said program. After years of Angelos preventing any real direction for that franchise, the presence of an actual plan should have them giddy.

    The Royals are further along in their own plan, and that's the thing that has to make you nervous if you've been following this team for any length of time. I'm, of course, not the best person to gauge Royals' fans feelings about their team beyond those who post on this blog and by looking at the K's attendance records, but this is a team that's been directionless and wallowing in underachievers for quite a while. Now that Moore has come in and put his stamp on the team--yes, I'm well aware that some players on the team are Baird's--and there's actually progress being made, hope springs again. This upcoming year is one where people have reason to be optimistic, with the power of optimism comes the possibility of disappointment. This is not just a team that is relying on prospects to rebuild from the ground up, this is a franchise that has significant assets committed to veteran players who--as with us all--will not be around forever. Whatever your opinion on the subject, Dayton Moore and the Royals FO have signaled that Kansas City is close to contention. The first big signing, that of Gil Meche to a contract that looked ridiculous at the time, was successful. The signing that made headlines this off-season was the apparently-cranky Jose Guillen being inked to a multi-year deal. These are, of course, not the only deals made by Moore and to suggest otherwise would be to sell him short. However, it's time to realize that if the value gained by pouring millions into Meche and now Guillen is actually to be used, the Royals need to be a real, live, contending team very soon. Where "very soon"  means "by 2010."
   

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I lack the technical skills to construct a fancy, and eye-saving table. So we'll do this the hard way:

Fluke, or Development?

ERA 2007: 3.67; Car: 4.44

ERA+ 2007: 128; Car: 101

Road ERA 2007: 3.47; Car: 4.98

WHIP 2007: 1.30; Car: 1.41

K/9 2007: 6.50; Car: 6.38

K/BB 2007: 2.52; Car: 1.72

G/F 2007: 1.36; Car: 1.03

Be advised, those career numbers include last season as well -- no time to calculate by hand otherwise, though I invite you to -- so in most cases the difference between Gil Meche '99-06 and Gil Meche '07, is even more pronounced.

So obviously, it was a career year, with Meche allowing fewer baserunners and using an upsurge in groundballs to control and limit big innings. (Meche's G/F ratio has never approached anything like what he did in 2007.) Meche's K-rate actually went down from 2006 to 2007, but was more than offset by a huge downturn in walks. In 2006 Meche walked 84 batters in 186.2 innings, in 2007, Meche walked only 62 men, while laboring through 216 innings. Thirty more innings, with 22 less BBs, nice. The improved control/approach and the increased ground-ball generation seems to suggest some legitimate strides. How large those strides are, I don't know.

More thoughts? Lets look at the clutch/leverage angle:

OPS allowed with 2-outs 2007: .702; Car: .740

OPS allowed with Men On 2007: .724; Car: .774

OPS allowed with RISP 2007: .653; Car: .684

OPS allowed with RISP/2-out 2007: .716; Car: .691

Eh, nothing too glaring. It looks like Meche was better in high-leverage situations in 2007, but he was better in all ways, so thats to be expected. Perhaps the gap is a wee bit larger than justified -- especially that OPS w/men on stat -- but, again, nothing too fluky.

Lets set the Meche ERA Over/Under for 2008 at 4.40. You going over or under?