With the trade deadline looming and the continued pursuit of the roster/organization on everyone's mind  it's worthwhile to take a look at the moves Dayton Moore has already made. Part I takes a look at how the position players with the big club. Stay tuned for Part II (big league pitchers) and Part III (minor leaguers).

It was 2006, Lebanon and Israel were doing their thing, FEMA did a "heckuva job" in New Orleans and the Royals were supposedly beginning an era of competence (as per Posnanski after Opening Day) thanks to a bizarre December spending spree that brought in Mark Grudzielanek, Doug Mientkiewicz, Joe Mays, Paul Bako and Reggie Sanders. (Vintage RR posts here and here.) Meanwhile, the franchise was a full season behind the Beltran trade and preparing for the Jackson County Stadium Tax Subsidy Vote. In a stunning coincidence, Bud Selig "promised" Kansas City an All-Star game pending a proper allocation of JC's limitless public monies.

To a surprising extent, the 2006 lineup, as Moore more or less inherited it, remains the 2008 edition. You can find good teams that have had more turnover than this:

The 2006 Royals went 62-100.

You can quibble with some of these slots as they are crudely defined here -- for example, I'm considering Gathright a bench player in the table above, although he's actually played more innings in CF than anyone else -- but for quick and dirty purposes these are the positions according to the organizational masterplan for the two seasons. As in Gathright's case, for some of the players "bench" may not be quite the right label, but more or less it works, and I've included only the additional players who logged significant playing time.

What stands out is how much holdover there has been. Three of the positions are exactly the same, although perhaps not without some controversy. Buck is still the primary catcher, Grudzielanek is still at second base and DeJesus is still in center. Moreover, Mark Teahen remains an everyday fixture in the lineup, although he's shifted from third base to the outfield, and Esteban German is still a utility player. When you factor in that Alex Gordon and Billy Butler, lineup cornerstones if everything goes well, are also Baird-era draftees, the 2008 lineup remains a very Allard creation.

Subjectively and intuitively, the 2008 edition should be better than their 2006 progenitor: the holdovers (Buck, Teahen, DeJesus) should be hitting their peaks, Emil Brown has been upgraded to Jose Guillen and a decline-phase Mike Sweeney has been converted to supposed prospect and pure hitter Billy Butler. Miguel Olivo is a huge upgrade over Paul Bako. Unfortunately, the sum of their parts just hasn't quite added up to being much more better than the Minky era. The 2006 team ended up averaging 4.67 runs per game, better than the current squad's 4.06 average.

Huh?

To start, the holdovers, DeJesus somewhat excepted, have failed to truly break out. Grudz and German are still around and are, as the man sang, still the same. We wait still on Gordon and Butler to truly arrive. Seemingly really easy upgrades at SS and 1B have turned into, umm... Tony Pena Jr. and Ross Gload. This bears repeating. Just find someone better than the worst overall player in the game (Berroa) and one of the weakest first basemen (Minky). He couldn't do it. Where have you gone Doug Mientkiewicz? Jose Guillen has had one insanely awesome month and two bad ones. Finally, although Miguel Olivo has out-hit Paul Bako, Dayton Moore's first big league pickup, Joey Gathright, has eaten up a ton of playing time over the last three seasons and consistently failed to hit. In 237 plate appearances this year, Gator has three extra-base hits. Three. In 248 last year, he had eight. Gains like the Bako/Olivo and the Brown/Guillen exchanges have been mitigated by players like Gathright.

Over the last few months there's been a persistent meme that Moore is focused on rebuilding -- really, "building" should be used throughout this post, since it was so long ago that anything around here was actually built -- the organization's pitching coffers, and that the lineup will be more of a patchwork project. And while it isn't yet clear that the team's lineup core is actually enough of one to bother building around, it was certainly more than there was among the hurlers. Sure, in 2008, Butler and Gordon are disappointments, but they are near locks to improve, at least a little bit. There are problems however, and Moore is not immune criticism for his utter failure to upgrade the roster at two slots, SS and 1B, that looked to be no-brainer/any AAA lifer would have been better. He hasn't found better bench options than what Allard managed in Stairs/Costa/Graffy and it's possible he's done worse.

Lastly, there's the large but mysterious issue of defense. The quality of the team's defense is harder to definitively pin-down, but according to BP's defensive efficiency data, the 2008 squad is, relative to competition, an improvement. Then again, the 2006 team was terrible, posted a D-Eff of .682, good for 28th best in baseball and 13th in the AL. The current team stands at 19th overall and 9th in baseball. (Although the pure number, .698, is not much different.) So regarding defense, Moore has taken a terrible team and produced a below-average one.

The Royals hired Moore on May 31, 2006 and after over two years of his stewardship, the offense is worse than the bad one he inherited.  Considering that he also had nothing to do with Butler or Gordon, and with no notable position prospects in the system, we must conclude that Dayton's handling of the position players in blue and white has been akin to Argentina's performance in the Falklands War: at best, a disappointment, and at worst an abject failure.

Honoring Mike Sweeney With the news that Mike Sweeney has signed a minor league contract with the Oakland A's, we can finally come to terms with the fact that the first-baseman's time in Kansas City is, anti-climatically, over, considering Sweeney hasn't made more than 300 plate appearances in a season since 2005. Its hard to pinpoint just where things turned sour between Sweeney and the hearty band of lunatics known as Royals fans, but it's unmistakable that for many years the dynamic of the relationship has been askew. Importantly, this has been a one-sided phenomenon, as I can't recall any instance of Sweeney lashing out or whining or even acting defensive. As early as 2003 I can recall fans bitching about Sweeney's injuries, which is fairly remarkable given the fact that his string of problems really only began in earnest in 2002, when he missed 36 games. As the years rolled on and the games missed totals grew (54 in '03, 56 in '04, 40 in '05, 102 in '06, 88 in '07) the "Sweeney used steroids" cry grew louder and louder in the internet back-alley known as the Royals blogosphere, a suspicion that never seemed either interesting or likely to other fans. As we have seen, health and good performances can get you labeled as a user, but apparently, so can injuries and decline. Despite the fact that Sweeney's career was playing out just like those of the hundreds of slow, un-athletic, 1B/DH types that came before him, and before the so-called "Steroid Era" (who should we give the trademark rights to this gem? I'm gonna throw a dart at a printout of the ESPN staff, with Neyer's name crossed-off and see where it lands) there was a vocal segment of the population that was convinced Sweeney was our own local branch manager for BALCO.

Tellingly, this summer, when ESPN.com's SportsNation ran their Face of the Franchise feature this summer, Sweeney won the plurality of votes in all but two states: Nebraska and Kansas. Which is to say, everyone but people in the heart of Royals country - if only we could get a county by county breakdown of Missouri, yes Sweeney "won" the Show Me State, but with a much smaller percentage than in more distant states - that is to say, actual Royals fans, considered Sweeney the "Face of the Franchise"; nationwide, out of the 27,003 votes cast in the feature, Sweeney pulled in an astounding 58% percent of the votes in a four-man field. I'll hazard to guess that no other team had this strange dynamic at work.

Even odder, it is possible that if it hadn't been for yours truly, Sweeney wouldn't have even been an option. Numerous teams had multiple panelists nominate the same player, and to my knowledge there was no inside info given as to if a player had been "taken". (I certainly received no such information, in fact, I was told not to worry about it, should this be the case.) So, as it turned out, Neyer nominated (this is much too formal a word, but you get the idea) Dayton Moore, Posnanski went with Billy Butler, and, umm, Eric Young, went with Alex Gordon. Until the last minute, I was actually leaning towards pegging Angel Berroa as the "Face of the Franchise", but ultimately lost my nerve because the Royals had actually, finally, given up on him. Against my natural inclination towards being sarcastic and pessimistic, I decided to be sentimental, and sent in a little blurb about Sweeney. Here's the full version of what I sent the editor, in all its sticky-sweetness:

Well, basically, it didn't have a happy ending. Sweeney spent all of July and August (save a day) on the DL, and played his last game (likely) as a Royal in the season finale against the Tribe, going 0-3 and popping out to the catcher in his final at bat. In the bottom of the 7th, Bell gave him a nice ovation, pulling him from first base with one out in the inning. In his final post-DL stint with the Royals, Sweeney hit .311/.344/.393 and .260/.315/.404 on the season. Unfortunately, his low batting average dropped his career line below .300, to a torturous .299. We all know how limited batting average is as a stat, nevertheless, if I was in his shoes, I sure as hell wouldn't want to retire as a .29 hitter. Sweeney's final home run with the squad was a two-run shot off Freddy Garcia in a June 8th game at the K.

Now that we know he's gone, lets take a moment to remember the good times.

While Sweeney actually debuted with the Royals as a September call-up in 1995(!), he didn't truly become a regular player until 1999, playing in only a total of 226 games from '96-'98. These were the years when Sweeney was a catcher, and it's not commonly remarked how much backstop he actually played in the Major Leagues, as people tend to act as if he only caught in the low-minors, while actually he caught 201 games as a Royal. Then again, Sweeney's breakout came in 1999, when the Royals moved him to first base - although fantasy players will note that he still had a sweet "C" designation in most leagues that year, making him one of the more valuable roto players in the AL - when Mike hit .322/.387/.520. Sweeney was an absolute beast that season, posting monthly OPS splits of: .906, .920, .868, 1.116, .714 and .922. In '99 and '00 the Royals actually had very good lineups, scoring 921 and 930 runs respectively, totals which we can only dream of today, and Sweeney was a major part of that surge. Now an established Major League player - but unfortunately not a catcher in fantasy baseball anymore - in 2000 Sweeney continued his success, improving on his breakout season by .333 /.407/.523 while blasting a career-high 29 home runs. Sweeney was named to his first All-Star team that season, and finished 11th in the AL MVP voting, just behind the ever clutch Derek Jeter.

In 2001, Sweeney just continued mashing, hitting .304/.374/.542 and firmly cementing himself as one of the elite hitters in the game. For the second straight year he hit 29 homers, and, if you care about these things, he knocked in 144 RBIs, a single-season franchise record. Actually, it could have been an even better season had not Sweeney slumped over the second-half. Sweeney was again named to the All-Star team, and at the break he had already belted 21 homers and was hitting an insane .333/.391/1.011. He was even eight for nine in stolen base attempts! At the end of the season, Sweeney again garnered some down-ballot support in the MVP voting, finishing tied for 21st with Garrett Anderson and Toriiiiiii Hunter. Of course, Kaz Sasaki finished 19th and Dougie Mientkiewicz finished 14th, so... yea. Meanwhile, after peaking at 77 wins in 2000, the Royals were in a severe downturn, winning only 65 games in 2001.

Sweeney's 2002 season was the hinge moment in his career; he once again raked, but missed significant time due to injury for the first time in his career. Sweeney was an everyday player through July 3rd that season (game 81) but began missing games on that date, ultimately missing a full month from July 13th through August 13th. Sweeney's season line on July 3rd? Another Pujolsian line of .362/.435/.611. Sweeney was not quite 29 years old, and had been a dominant hitter for four years. From this point on, it was all downhill.

Sweeney's line over the rest of 2002 was solid, but not quite as otherwordly as it had been before he went down with injury, hitting .303/.386/.483 over his final 207 plate appearances. For the season, Sweeney ended up with a still absurd .340/.417/.563 line, finishing second in the AL in BA, fourth in OBP and fifth in OPS. For the third straight season Sweeney would claim MVP votes (he finished 20th in '02) while also watching a second-half decline keep Steve Balboni's franchise record for home runs safe. When the season ended Sweeney had played in 812 career games, had 899 career hits, 123 career HRs and was a lifetime .309/.382/.501 hitter in the big leagues.

And yet, 2003, began like the last four seasons, with Sweeney hitting .311/.431/.518 on June 1st, a line which actually represented something of a disappointment, considering most fans didn't notice the gaudy OBP Sweeney was racking up. Poignantly, in the last fully healthy stretch of his career, Sweeney went on one final tear, hitting .364/.470/.600 in June, driving in 20 runs in 15 games played that month. Why only 15 games in June? Because after a June 18th game against the Twins, Sweeney went back to the bench, not returning to the lineup until August 8th, a full 46 games later. When Sweeney left, the Royals were 36-32, standing in second place (they'd already blown their initial huge lead), when he returned they were 60-53, barely holding on to huge lead #2 by a half game. Surely Sweeney had returned just in time to revive the Royals' miraculous playoff hopes.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen on either count. The Royals went 23-26 the rest of the way, falling all the way to third place, seven games behind the Twins. Sweeney, didn't help matters, hitting .260/.325/.379 upon his return. This isn't to say he cost the Royals the pennant, only that his individual misfortune coincided with the team's. Remember, they'd already blown the infamous 7.5 game nest egg by the time he returned. Sweeney was named to the All-Star team again in 2003, but once the season ended, his composite line was noticeably down, falling to .293/.391/.467.

The next two seasons ('04 and '05) showed that Sweeney could still hit, but that he couldn't stay healthy. Sweeney would start hot in 2004 (.917 OPS in April) but struggled badly in May and June, before rebounding with a vintage Sweeney stretch, hitting .331/.389/.603 from July 1st on. Sadly, that only meant until August 21, as Sweeney only lasted until the team's 120th game. His season line was again solid, .287/.347/.504. In 2005, Sweeney would stay much the same, hitting .300/.347/.517, earning his fifth All-Star selection, while missing large chunks of playing time during the middle of the season. If 2003 was the hinge, 2005 was the end of the door. After 2005, that door effectively closed.

Sweeney barely played from August 2005 to August 2006, as he grabbed only 83 PAs in '06 before heading to the DL again on May 1st, the owner of a .176/.313/.309 line. Nobody really noticed, but when he came back on August 8th, he actually was a productive hitter, going .295/.367/.497 in his final 40 games that season. However, that last bit of bat speed seemed gone by 2007, as Sweeney had transformed into a completely different hitter. The man who had been seemingly the only patient Royal for a decade was now seeing as little pitches per PA as any hitter on the team, often trying to cheat on fastballs early in the count to be productive. Sweeney played in 57 of the team's first 70 games in '07, hitting a bleak .245/.307/.407 in the process, before succumbing to injury again. On June the 16th, Sweeney went 1-5 against the Marlins, and fell to .299 on his career for the first time since he'd initially topped .300, and two days later he'd be replaced in the lineup. He returned on August the 31st, and played regularly in September, providing veteran leadership on how to steal time from Justin Huber. With any hope, Ross Gload learned well. Sweeney hit a somewhat robust .311/.344/.393 in his final post-DL return to the lineup, but evidently it was not enough to impress Dayton Moore. Nor was it enough to get his batting average back to .300.

With all this said, now that we stand at the end of this journey, its important to step back from the year-to-year narrative which so clearly shows a slow but dramatic rise and fall. Simply put, Mike Sweeney is one of the best players in franchise history and a player who approached a Hall of Fame peak from 1999-2003. Even if we adjust for the offensive levels of the era, Sweeney's presence across the team leader-boards is noteworthy. His .340 batting average in 2002 is the second best in team history, topped only by Brett's .390 in 1980 (duh) and his .333 in 2000 is not far off the pace, coming in as the 4th best. Yes, the offensive numbers of the last two decades have been higher. Then again, the K, along with many other locales, has also gone to natural grass, a fact we should keep in mind when comparing pure batting average numbers. Hal McRae and Willie Wilson couldn't hit .330 without a concrete infield. Across the offensive spectrum, in everything except triples and steals, Sweeney recorded seasons in the franchise's top 10, in many cases, more than once.

Despite being a slow player, Sweeney was a doubles machine, hitting 46 in 2001 (2nd most in team history) and 44 in 1999 (7th) and ranks fifth overall in that category, just about where he ranks in every major category. While our collective memory, and indeed the general thrust of this post, suggests that Sweeney has been a shell of himself the last few seasons, we shouldn't go so far as to forget that, even in recent years, Sweeney has been a frequently productive hitter. No longer great, certainly not, but until 2007 he wasn't far removed from the now-beloved levels of Ross Gload.

Mike Sweeney's All-Time Royal Ranks

Games Played- 6th
Hits- 6th
Home Runs- 2nd
Runs- 6th
Doubles- 5th
Total Bases- 6th
Extra Base Hits- 5th
RsBI- 5th
Walks- 5th

Even with the slow start and the slow fade, Sweeney's lifetime OPS is .861, good for second-best in team history. His adjusted OPS is 7th, behind one legitimately superior hitter (Brett) and mostly guys that didn't play near as much with the Royals (Tartabull, Aikens, Porter).

As suggested above, its useful to break Sweeney's career into three sections.

The Three Ages of Mike Sweeney

1995-98: .258/.324/.392 (750 PAs)
1999-03: .324/.396/.535 (2473 PAs)
2004-07: .282/.341/.478 (1474 PAs)

Sweeney's 1999-2003 peak stands as one of the greatest runs in team history, and aside from the incomparable Brett, it is difficult to find a better stretch from a purely offensive standpoint. Over those five seasons, Sweeney hit .324/.396/.535, a full half-decade of significant production. Considering how much Royals fans have invested in either fleeting performances, like Bo Jackson, or one's that weren't actually that good, like Frank White, it would be a shame if Sweeney's decline dimmed our memories of how good he actually was. Even when we factor in his lack of defense and base-running, neither of which was always a total loss, Mike Sweeney is without question one of the top five position players in team history and the closest thing the Royals have had to Brett since 1993. For a player whose career spanned the darkest era in team history, Mike Sweeney is a player who should be remembered.

Another blast from the past (a haunting?) on a rainy Thursday. Back in January, I looked at the Top Five Doubles Hitters in the post-Brett Era...

Continuing the life-changing examination of the post-Brett era in Kansas City. This time, with a nod to the problems inherent in taking RsBI very seriously, lets instead look at doubles.

Doubles are interesting because a double is a fairly good play, but, at the same time, a double is also sometimes just a home run that doesn't go as far, or do as much damage. Here are the run expectancies for doubles, or, more properly, for a dude standing on second base:

Run Expectancy for a Dude Standing on Second Base:

Dude on Second, no outs: 1.154 runs
Dude on Second, one out: .736 runs
Dude on Second, two outs: .3645

Note: these numbers are just from the 2006 season.

Thinking more about doubles, a fairly common double situation is "man on first moves to third on double" (at least if Sweeney or Buck aren't on first). In that situation, with no outs, the double moves the run expectancy of the inning from .926 to 1.807. With one man already out, the double pushes the expected runs from .567 to 1.173. All good things.

Anyway, here are the top five doubles men since 1993:

Top Five Doubles Hitters For the Royals Since 1993:

1. Mike Sweeney- 292
2. Joe Randa- 223
3. Carlos Beltran- 156
3t. Johnny Damon- 156
5. Jermaine Dye- 115

About what you would expect regarding doubles. Mike Macfarlane has 174 doubles as a Royal -- good for 9th most in club history -- but the majority of them came in the early '90s, which is for whatever reason outside the data-set I'm interested in presently. Berroa currently has 103 doubles as a Royal, and David DeJesus already has 82. If David doesn't catch Angel in this category by the end of 2008, then that probably means things are going horribly wrong.

Overall, Kauffman Stadium has played as a good hitters park over the last decade and change, usually posting solid pro-hitter park factor. Still, the dimensions have changed twice, and intuitively I would suspect that the moved in fences helped homers but suppressed doubles, while the new/old dimensions of the last three seasons have increased doubles while decreasing homers. Unfortunately, I don't have this data in front of me. If anyone knows where outcome-specific historical park-factors can be found, I'd love to know. However, it must be remembered that single-year PFs aren't terribly reliable as it is, and single-outcome ones can be fairly noisy.

Anyway, the beat goes on. Congrats to Sweeney on another post-Brett victory.

Update [2007-8-9 12:46:48 by royalsreview]:

While Sweeney's managed only a 10 double season to date, he's obviously in no danger of being caught any time soon. On other fronts, David DeJesus has, indeed, passed Angel on the All-Time Doubles list. As of August 8th, David has notched 108 2Bs, five ahead of Berroa's 103.

The sometimes maligned Emil Brown has snuck all the way up to 83 doubles as a Royal, passing Raul Ibanez's total of 81 with a two-double game against Texas back on July 28th. Amazingly, the Royals didn't honor this achievement with an in-game ceremony.

Mark Teahen now owns 73 career doubles (two behind our beloved Mike Tucker's total as a Royal), while Buck sits at 66.

Of the glories of the Royals in the All-Star game, our praise can have no end.

Since 1990 our Royals have gone 0-8 at the plate and failed to appear in four games. Five times, the only Royal involvement was a single at-bat.

Here's the year-by-year breakdown:

2007: Gil Meche named, did not play.
2006: Mark Redman named, did not play.
2005: Mike Sweeney named, struck out as a pinch-hitter in the 7th.
2004: Ken Harvey named, struck out as a pinch-hitter in the 3rd.
2003: Mike MacDougal and Sweeney named, neither appeared.
2002: Mike Sweeney named, replaced Paul Konerko at 1B in the 7th inning, flied out to right in the 9th inning.
2001: Mike Sweeney named, replaced Jason Giambi at first in the 8th inning, flied out to right in the 8th inning.
2000: Jermaine Dye voted to start, Mike Sweeney named. Sweeney pinch-hit for James Baldwin in the 4th, reaching on an error. Sweeney did not appear in the field. Dye walked once and struck out.
1999: Jose Rosado named and pitched a scoreless 4th.
1998: Dean Palmer named, and pinch-hit for John Wetteland in the 8th, grounding into a double play.
1997: Jose Rosado named. Rosado allowed one run in the 7th inning, tying the game at 1-1. However, in the bottom of the 7th the AL re-took the lead on a Sandy Alomar HR. Thanks to the eternal genius of the pitcher wins rule, Rosado was then credited as the eventual "winner" of the game.
1996: Jeff Montgomery named, did not appear.
1995: Kevin Appier named, actually throwing two perfect innings (the 3rd and 4th).
1994: David Cone named, somewhat disastrously. Cone allowed three runs over two innings, contributing to a 8-7 AL loss.
1993: Jeff Montgomery named and appeared, pitching a scoreless 7th.
1992: Jeff Montgomery named and appeared, allowing two runs in two-thirds of an inning pitched.
1991: Danny Tartabull voted to start at DH, going 0-2 with a strikeout. Tartabull was replaced by Harold Baines in the 6th inning.
1990: Brett Saberhagen named, pitching two scoreless innings (5th and 6th), and was named the winning pitcher in a 2-0 AL victory.
1989: Bo Jackson voted a started and Mark Gubicza named to the squad. Bo famously led off the bottom of the first with a homer. Bo went 2-4 with a steal and was named the game's MVP. Gubes pitched a scoreless 4th inning.

The All-Star bullpen warm-up that defined a generation.

Beyond two pinch-hit Ks, a Royal has not appeared on the field during an All-Star game since the infamous tie game in 2002, when Mike Sweeney played three defensive innings at first. Despite some occasionally relevant pitching performances, the last Royal to record a hit in an All-Star game was Bo Jackson in 1989. To put that in perspective, Bo hasn't played a major league game since 1994. (For a full run-down of Royal pitching in the ASG, click here, courtesy of the KC Star.)

In sum:

-No Royal has appeared in an All-Star Game since 2005.
-No Royal has appeared in the field since 2002.
-No Royal pitcher has appeared in the Game since 1999.
-No Royal has recorded an ASG hit since 1989.

George Brett retired after the 1993 season. Since Brett leads the Royals in just about every single statistical category, I thought it would be interesting to examine the Royals leaderboards for the post-Brett era. At random intervals over the off-season, I hope to do just that.

Without further ado, the leaders:

Top 5 Royal HR Hitters Since 1993:

1. Mike Sweeney- 190
2. Carlos Beltran- 123
3. Joe Randa- 86
4. Jermaine Dye- 85
5. Johnny Damon- 65

Its a little surprising to see Joe Randa come out ahead of Jermaine Dye on this list, although Randa did play nearly twice as many games as a Royal (1019 to 547). Randa's final homer as a Royal came on September 25th, 2004 against the White Sox, the only Royal highlight in a 5-1 loss that pushed the Royals to 57-97. Moreover, I've always felt Dye was a little overrated as a player, at least until his random MVP-level season in 2006. After a solid 1999 with the Royals, Dye went nuts in April/May of 2000, hitting .388/.459/.847 with 11 homers. Considering he finished the season hitting .321/.390/.561 with 33 homers, you wouldn't say he was horrible the rest of the way, but he did cease being a truly elite player. Still, thanks to the early season glory he earned an All-Star berth and a disproportionate amount of media coverage. If he'd thrown up his 1.306 OPS in a July/August stretch only the rotoheads would have truly noticed... But anyway, nothing against Jermaine Dye, but he is out-homered as a Royal by Randa.

After Damon's 65, Raul Ibanez comes in at 6th in the post-Brett era with 55 homers, followed by yes... the one and only Angel Berroa with 45. Actually, Berroa's tied with the Mighty Mark Quinn at the moment, but should inevitably pass him.