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.

The Royals finished April with a 12-15 record and ended the fifth month of the year with a 22-34 mark (now 23-34). Considering the month contained the team's epic losing streak, an overall record of 10-19 in May wasn't a total disaster, and could have been much worse.

Let's take a look at how the boys in blue did at the plate in May. First, the team totals:

101 runs is actually not last in the league, it's tied for 11th. The Angels also scored 101 (in one fewer game) and the Mariners and Indians were worse, scoring 99 and 98 runs respectively, as the new deadball era sweeps across the American League. Despite the advantage of the DH, scoring in the American League is lower than in the NL, which of course can 100% be attributed to PEDs testing. 100%. Everyone who used PEDs was a hitter in the AL. Moving on... The Royals only hit 12 homers in May, which is remarkable. Not surprisingly, no team in the AL was anywhere close to this number, as the league average was 24 homers.It isn't anything like a full consolation, but the Royals did rip 65 doubles in May, second-most in the American League. Weirdly, the Royals continue to not hit triples, despite having some decent triplers getting regular playing time. They hit just 2 in May. Then again, no one ever got poor betting against Joey Gathright's extra base hit totals.

Speaking of Gathright, now about those individual numbers, sorted by OPS:

This is how you have a bad month. For a guy who probably won't be in the Major Leagues in 2010, Tony Pena Jr. has generated a ton of discussion this month, but he isn't standing alone in the forest of horribleness. Considering defensive value and where they play, it's certain that Ross Gload (another Dayton pickup) was the worse player in May, and Alberto Callaspo wasn't far behind. You can say the same for Billy Butler, who slugged .302 with no value on defense.

Other than Miguel Olivo's studliness and a decent month from Jose Guillen (characteristically a lack of walks drags down his performance, even when he's hitting over .300) nobody else stepped into the void. Although Gordon (and Teahen) continued to get his walks and John Buck tossed in his annual random month of hitting .300, there isn't much good displayed here. (Expect a .210 average from Buck in June.)

Pitching numbers will be up tomorrow.

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.

Continue reading this post »

Earlier this winter "daveyork" posted a hilarious diary entitled "A Royals Fan Top Ten List for the Offseason". In his post he coined/created a new honor, the Mark Quinn/Andy Sisco Award. Here was his definition:

One player who fans have hope for in the upcoming season will horribly regress and live on only potential for the next season - The Mark Quinn/Andy Sisco award. Zack Greinke would also be a good candidate for 2006 award. Early odds on 2007 include Ryan Shealy and Esteban German.

Thus, a player like John Buck or Angel Berroa doesn't really apply. Nor does, at this point, Sweeney or Grudzielanek. Those players might fail, but their failures aren't quite what the brilliant career of Mark Quinn was supposed to represent. With that in mind, lets take a look at the early candidates for the Mark Quinn Award, which honors the position player who will "horribly regress" after building up our hopes, starting with dave's own predictions, Esteban German and Ryan Shealy.

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Esteban German: In 2006 German did everything for the Royals, playing six positions (as well as DHing) and, incredibly, batting in all nine lineup slots. Not just a LaRussian utility player in the extreme, German also hit, posting a .326/.422/.459 line complete with 5 triples and 3 home runs. Most impressively, he maintained a high level of performance despite being jerked around by Buddy Bell during the season's first half. Once he became a semi-regular player during the dog days, he maintained his superficially high batting average, but also kept taking his walks and increased his power, slugging .494 in the second half of the year.

Why Is He a Candidate for a Quinn?

Of course, it was his age-28 season, and he'd never done anything remotely like that before at the major league level. (Although you could also make the case that he'd never been given the chance.) The Royals have seen this before, once relishing of the delights of the flexible Desi Relaford, who hit .288/.341/.435 in the first half of 2003. The other immediate comparison might be to Junior Spivey, a polished minor-leaguer who gained a sterters job at 27, had his career year, and now seems like a bust. Still, theres a positive-side to that story, namely German's aforementioned polish. His minor league stats reveal a guy who's always taken his pitches, taken his walks, which bodes well as a value-sustainer. However the high batting average and triples power may fall off as the league adjusts to him. This is essentially what PECOTA sees, projecting a .285/.357/.383 line. Thats a useful player if handled right, but not the fringe All-Star the Royals enjoyed last season.

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Ryan Shealy: You know the story: Shealy was blocked by Todd Helton in Colorado and Dayton Moore freed him. Once in Kansas City, Shealy showed up and immediately started raking.

Why Is He a Candidate for a Quinn?

Only he didn't. Shealy hit .280/.338/.451, an OK but still substandard line for a firstbaseman in the American League. The much-maligned Mike Sweeney hit .300/.347/.517 in 2005 and most Royals fans reacted like he was Angel Berroa. Like German, Shealy's a fresh face, but he isn't young; last season was his age-26 season. On the bright side, scouts love him, he's cheap and he was adjusting to a new league, level and city last season, so maybe he's about to blossom into an offensive machine. Still, whats the upside here? According to PECOTA his 90% projection (better than 90% of all other simulations) is a good but not great .297/.365/.549 with 26 home runs. This tepid projection is mirrored by John Sickels, who sees a similar player, a guy who's putting up 1980s firstbasemen numbers in a more offensive age. Credit Moore for getting Shealy for a reasonable price, but there's a good chance Shealy won't put up near as many runs as Royals fans seem to expect in 2007.

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David DeJesus: DeJesus is a nice player with a broad range of skills: he's a good average guy, he can work a walk, he's got some pop and he's good in the field at an important position. He's also a good baserunner, as long as he doesn't try to steal bases. He's already played 349 games with the Royals, and owns a respectable career line of .292/.362/.434, a line that includes a nice chunk of "playing hurt" time.

Why Is He a Candidate For A Quinn?

As we touched on PECOTA Day a lingering fear is brewing that DeJesus has already peaked as a player, that he's settled into a nice performance level, but isn't getting better. Like Shealy and German, he's not as young as you might think, turning 27 last month. Nevertheless, heading into his Age 27 season, PECOTA sees a .290/.357/.424 season, which is to say a worse hitting performance than he managed in 2005 or 2006. Like Shealy, DeJesus might be suffering from an upside-deficiency, although in a more acute sense: his 90% projection is a batting average-driven .323/.392/.483 season, basically Johnny Damon's peak year of 2000. Thats damn useful, however unlikely. Worse still, the Royals don't seem to be sure where to play DeJesus, leaving the door open to a huge value-decrease should they play him in left.

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Breaking down the odds:

No one else seems to fit as a potential Quinn winner. The Royals have other young players, but guys like Gathright, Costa and Maier are too unproven to truly qualify. Remember, here's the Mark Quinn career path:

Mark Quinn Through the Years:

1999: .333/.385/.733, 6 HRs (64 PAs)
2000: .294/.342/.488, 20 HRs (535 PAs)
2001: .269/.298/.459, 17 HRs (465 PAs)
2002: .237/.301/.368, 2 HRs (81 PAs)

Quinn peaked at age 26 and played his last Major League game (to date) at age 28.

The Quinn Award is fairly subjective, because you have to take into account what the preseason buzz/hype/hope for the player is. This perception should be based in reality: remember, Quinn showed up and started hitting right away. He was young, he was cheap, and life was good. With that in mind, German has clearly had his peak year, but everyone seems to understand that. I'm not so sure that understanding exists for Shealy and DeJesus, from whom the world expects greater things (and David is one of my favorite players personally). To this end, German could win the award, but he's have to really hit poorly to do so, whereas DeJesus might have an OPS 120 points higher than German, but run away with the award.

Still, they aren't the favorites. At the moment, Shealy is really a centerpiece of the Dayton Moore regime, right there along with the Meche-for-55 million moment and the Gathright "I'm old school, you win with defense" trade. In the post-Minky, post-Sweeney era, Shealy seems a refreshing return to a good, old-fashioned gigantic first baseman who can HIT... except I'm still not sure he's actually that good. Unlike German and DeJesus, Shealy doesn't contribute much defensively, hurts roster flexibility and is slow as hell.

But, he ain't Jeremy Affeldt.

2007 Mark Quinn Award Preseason Odds

Shealy: 40%
German: 25%
DeJesus: 20%
No One, Everyone Plays Well: 15%

Last night the Royals improbably rallied against the Reds for three goals in the 8th inning, tying the game at 5. Thanks to some cutesy/stupid pinch-hitter calls earlier in the game, Buddy Bell needed to make one more call to the bench to hit for Todd Wellemeyer with two outs and two men on. Because Matt Stairs had already been burned, Bell called upon Angel Berroa to be the hero, after giving Angel the first seven innings off for rest.

There wasn't a single Royal fan that had any hope of seeing Berroa even luck into a single there. As someone said on RoyalBoard a Berroa at-bat is like a concession at this point. Berroa grounded out of course, and in the bottom of the 8th the Reds took the lead back, letting the Royals get a fresh losing streak going in time for the I-70 series in St. Louis.

It didn't have to be this way, it didn't have to come to this. The Royals don't need Miguel Tejada on the pivot, and they don't need Derek Jeter. They just need someone who's decent, as we're still recovering from the Neifi Perez era.

A part of the 2001 Johnny Damon trade (has it been 5 years?) Berroa came over with Roberto Hernandez -- who's also amazingly still in baseball -- with the fanbase hoping that Allard Baird was able to get something from Johnny Damon, whom everyone knew the Royals wouldn't/couldn't resign.

How did it get this bad? How did Berroa fall from the realm of vaguely useful to truly awful so fast? How much worse can he get before Buddy Bell doesn't play him every, single, day.

Its maddening to watch Berroa play: the errors, the baserunning mistakes, the endless strikeouts. And he isn't Adam Dunn either, someone who works the count and is willing to suffer the consequences; no, he's a free swinging hacker who's not afraid to swing at a ball that bounces.

Angel Berroa is hitting .240/.262/.332 in 2006. He's drawn six walks this season, in 268 PAs. Six.

In the last week, he's hitting .063/.118/.063. As we close June, Berroa's thrown up a .218/.253/.230 line on the month, doing his part to throw a wet blanket on the Royals' miraculous attempt to have a .500 month. One more split stat: on the road, Berroa's perhaps the worst player in baseball, hitting .177/.204/.234.

How did we get to this point? You don't see many players collapse during their age 24 through 28 seasons.

Sure, Berroa probably didn't deserve the Rookie of the Year award in 2003, but he wasn't an indefensible choice either. There was the weird anti-Japanese issue to deal with, as well as the fact that Berroa did play a premium position and did lead the Royals to an exciting 83 win season. Even in 2003, a .287/.338/.451 line isn't cheap, especially when you factor in a still decent baserunning set (21/26) and a defense that hadn't cratered.

Angel Berroa's OPS:

2003: .789
2004: .693
2005: .680
2006: .594

Can you spot the trend?

Thanks to the dogged efforts of the National League to field a miserable product, short stop hasn't been completely transformed to the extent we thought it might be during the "Holy Trinity" days of Nomah, Jeter, Arod (and Miggy). Still, Berroa's not getting the job done, even relative to position and putting aside questions of defense.

Here's how Berroa stacks up among short stops with at least 150 plate appearances:

Batting Average: Berroa- .240 (26th). Well, at least he's better than Juan Castro, Juan Uribe, Russ Adams, Khalil Greene and Clint Barmes.

On-Base Average: Berroa- .262 (28th). Berroa's down with the same group of guys hitting .230ish. Not to be outdone, but Berroa has the fewest walks of any min. 150 PA SS. Even Ronny Cedeno managed a .301 OBP guys.

Slugging Percentage: Berroa- .332 (28th). This is getting repetitive. We're still waiting on Berroa's first triple of the season. Is the homer's power completely gone? Well, this isn't a good way to start your age 28 season.

OPS: (for those that like combining things ) Berroa- .594 (29th). Good work from Angel here, managing to be even less than the anemic sum of his parts. He turned two 28th rankings in OPS' component parts, into a 29th ranking. Look at it this way, his OPS is .060 points below a 55 year old Royce Clayton, in Washington.

Here's a fun one.

Pitches Per Plate Appearance: Berroa- 3.30 (31st). Yep, thats dead last. Nobody's seeing fewer pitches than Angel. Actually, someone is seeing just as few, but still not less, as Juan Castro also sits a 3.30. I can't wait to follow this battle all season. Castro's in the Clubhouse (the minors/bench) with a solid figure, which puts the pressure on Angel. Of course, Angel can also surge ahead over the next three months.

Despite seeing so few pieces, Berroa's been able to manage this:

Strikeouts: Berroa- 45 (13th). At least Juan Castro only struck out 25 times. As we should know by now, strikeouts are an overratted evil on the offensive side. There are strikeouts and then there are strikeouts. Angel's getting strikeouts.

I can't resist this:

Walks Per Strikeout: Berroa- 0.13 (31st). Thats last among short stops. Actually, of the 264 Major League Players with at least 150 PAs, Berroa ranks 262 in terms of BB/K. Only a half-dead Miguel Olivo (.11) and the hacktastic Jeff Francoeur (.11) rank lower. Francoeur's wimped out and drawn 7 walks this season. I guess he's not as manly as Jenn Sterger thinks he is.

Runs Created Per 27 Outs: How would a lineup of all Berroa's fare? How does 2.16 (30th) sound? The positive is that a lineup of all Berroa's would also create a game that lasts about 75 minutes long. For the Juan Castro fans, Berroa triumphs here, as Castro could only manage a 2.04 total. Good thing Gardy chose him over Bartlett, huh.

Since his fluky 2003, the Royals have given Angel the opportunity to make 1095 outs. Counting sac bunts, it looks like this:

2004: 383 outs
2005: 454 outs
2006 (to date): 258

Thanks only to Buddisimo's willingness to bury Berroa at the bottom of the lineup have we been spared more outs. On the season Berroa ranks 4th on the team in PAs, behind the luminous trio of Grudz (299), Minky (286) and Emil Brown (284). No wonder this team can't score.

Meanwhile, Esteban German is hitting .333/.426/.405 and has been granted 133 PAs. Andres Blanco has seen 19 PAs. The only question now is, what does Berroa have to do to see more time on the bench? Strikeout 20 straight times? Hit .150 for a month... oh wait, already happening. The only time the Royals have sat Berroa this season was last week, after he was booed at home. If anything, it was a pro-Berroa, cowardly move by the team, complete with Bell covering for him the next day and saying he was a little banged up. Thats not good enough.

The goal is to win, right?