What? You mean you aren't running a "Justin Huber" search on Google News every few days?

Well, while most Americans were stuffing their faces and enduring awkward family time amidst terribly "original" arguments against the BCS ("it should be settled on the field!") MLB.com was quietly promoting the World Baseball Classic. Apparently, they're going to do it again, even though national innocence destroyer Roger Clemens isn't going to be involved this time. Our man Dick Kaegel penned the Aussie preview piece and called upon JLH to provide the quotes and a bit of insight.

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It's yet another getaway day for me here at the sprawling Royals Review headquarters. I'm excited to be flying out to Denver for a wedding, but I think by the time I return on Sunday night I'll be ready for some summertime equivalent of hibernation. I'm 28 and my fiancee (sp?) is 26, which puts us right in the friends getting married hotzone. Coupled with my own wedding planning (8/16) and the stretch of summer in which every weekend is a holiday, I think between mid-May and mid-August I'm scheduled to have about three weekends free. Last week I even mixed in a trip back to Austin for my high school reunion, which was predictably lame as hell. The top 20% of the class, in terms of popularity, showed up, and no one else, other than my four boys and their dates. None of the nerdy people I was friends with bothered to show, which left me there not talking to the cool crowd, just as I hadn't done in high school. Oh well. Anyway, it's going to be a summer of perpetually scrambling and scuffling to make sure RR stays decent, so be patient.

With last night's victory, the Royals improved to 36-43, their best mark through 79 games since 2003. Here are the recent records: 2007: 33-46; 2006: 27-52; 2005: 26-53; 2004: 29-50. What a nightmare. The 2008 bunch is still seven games under .500, is perhaps as close to .500 as they'll be all season (the rest of the way) and has been prone to some classic KC losing streaks, and still, compared to recent teams, looks like a world-beater. Still, as someone once said, I'm not here to talk about the past...

Links and miscellanea, some hither, some yon:

• Mellinger looks back at Dayton's moves, part 1.
  
• Mike Aviles is hitting .333/.363/.600 in 78 plate appearances. He's now 6th amongst all rookie position players in VORP, in roughly a fourth the playing time of guys like Evan Longoria and beloved Red Sox prospect Jacoby Ellsbury. His 10.2 is also good for third best on the team, tied with fellow middle infielder Grudzielanek (DeJesus leads with 17.1, Josey is second at 15.4). Prized pickup Miguel Olivo's month-long cold spell has dragged him down to fifth on the team, at 6.4, although still ahead of Alex Gordon (6.1). Greinke, in eight PAs, has a higher offensive VORP than German, Buck, Gload, Gathright and, of course, TPJ.
• The Royals need to find a way to make the middle-infield pieces fit a little better, because the current formation is out of whack. TPJ remains the only guy Hillman really trusts to handle short defensively, and he's the worst hitter in the Major Leagues. At second however, there's the four-headed hydra of German (who has struggled but has a track record of OBP), Grudzielanek, Callaspo and Aviles, the latter trio representing some of the better hitters on the team. It'll never happen, but we've come to the point where the roster is so weirdly shaped that the Royals should really consider playing one of their second basemen at first and DHing another for the time being. And yes, there was talk of doing this with catchers earlier in the year. Cool!
• Paul DePodesta will be doing a BP Q&A before a game at Petco on July 11th. If someone pays for my travel expenses I'll attend, if only to ask him how he could have possibly let Justin Huber be demoted. Speaking of our boy, in four games with the Portland Beavers, he's hitting .214/.313/.286.
• I noticed this post on Freddie Patek on Royally Speaking today.
  
• Good stuff from Rany.
• If you haven't read it yet -- hey, new people are hitting RR every day -- you might want to check out this old post on the Royals-Cards rivalry.
• I was listening to the Giants-Indians game on the radio two nights ago and I heard longtime Cleveland play by play man Tom Hamilton randomly say the following about Aaron Rowand, "I know we don't follow the National League much, but... he doesn't look as big as he used to." This was followed by color man Mike Hegan knowingly chortling. I can't tell you how much I despise stuff like this. If Hamilton really thinks Rowand (the hysteria knows no limits) used steroids, which is not only in most cases illegal, but, as we well know, an assault on our national innocence then he needs to say so directly. Save the wink-wink stuff for jokes about who slept in last night or the golf game this afternoon or whatever. Still, its not surprising to find someone being self-righteous, cowardly and completely speculative all in one sentence. This is America after all.
  
• SB Nation has an NBA Draft/prospects blog that's good. Might be worth visiting tonight.
• The Mariners are 28-50. All the more reason to read Lookout Landing.
• Sheehan (free) on the emerging trade market.
• Finally, as mentioned this week, the sweep of the Rockies was especially sweet because those damn purple-wearing bastards have had the gall to invade western Kansas, planting a radio affiliate in Goodland, Kansas. 
  According to our readers on the ground out there, western Kansas is definitely vulnerable. Making matters especially tense is the fact that Goodland is only miles away from Mount Sunflower, the highest point in the state. From this vantage point, the Rockies not only gain the strategic advantage of being able to see for great distances, they also have the psychological edge in knowing they own Kansas's peak. Hopefully, Battlefield Goodland is leaning blue for the first time in years.
  

Everyone's favorite Aussie got some play yesterday on the official team site:

Well, sorta positive I guess.

Especially in light of the Olivo suspension, it might not be a bad idea to see if Huber can still functionally catch. Sure, he's versatile now -- at the positions that everyone can play -- but if he can hack it as a possible emergency catcher for a few weeks, he might make the team out of Spring Training.

Or the Royals will just promote Tupman for a few weeks, which is about twenty times more likely. Although there was a brief movement towards teams being a little more cavalier with how they use the backup catcher slot, I can't see a proudly old-school regime like the Royals going the Matt LeCroy route.

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You know what, this topic is so 2006, but I don't care.

While it seems like Huber is overripe as a prospect, and usually associated with Craig Brazell types, he's still only 25 years old. Super hotshot wunderkind Alex Gordon turned 24 last week. Joey Gathright is 26, as is Mark Teahen. Ryan Shealy is 28.

PECOTA pegs him as a .253/.323/.420 hitter this season, which certainly isn't great. Nevertheless, what that projection shows is that even if his batting average totally bottoms out, there's still residual patience and decent power there. Honestly, I think Huber is better than that line. His big league numbers we can basically discard right off the bat given how small and randomly distributed they've been, leaving us with a career .289/.369/.495 line over seven minor league seasons. With reasonable playing time I don't think Huber is a .250 hitter in the big leagues. (I'm not saying he'll hit .290 either, for the record.) Adding an extra single or two a week to his PECOTA line, and he's closer to .270/.340/.440. This is both fairly trivial and not a major accomplishment, but I think Huber could post a higher OBP next season than Ross Gload. And lets not even talk about Shealy.

As the movie said, "feel his pain".

Look, I know, I know. I am not a scout. I'm sure everyone in baseball knows there's a hole in his swing or that he can't hit a backdoor slider or whatever. I know he's not a prospect and that no one, from Goldstein to Baseball America cares one whit about him. I know he's bad with the glove. All that being said, I just don't see a player who quite deserves the Brazell treatment either.

We're now on year three of dreaming about the magical day when Mark Teahen "breaks out". We're on year two of hoping that Shealy puts it all together. We're on year three of seeing what we have in Shane Costa. Those players are older than Huber.

We push optimistic narratives from some players -- "John Buck was messed up last season by Buddy Bell" -- and pessimistic ones for others. But really, we aren't that smart, and neither are the professionals. The anti-stats counter-revolution has dedicated itself to "the human element" without considering how problematic that choice is. Human beings aren't half as good at evaluating situations as they think they are: we invent patterns that aren't causal, our senses are poor and not well-fitted to memory and we're driven by biases and easily duped. Even with people we like, or even love, the exact same event splits off into multiple versions seconds after it occurs. (For those with spouses, or approximations, think about how the two of you can remember the same thing in two completely different ways.) Baseball is no different. I need to be careful here, but its pretty easy to see biases throughout the game, especially in player projection. I'm not talking about media coverage and beloved white grittiness, either, but more along the lines of positional development curves and player-types. For example, ever notice a trend among those, "great stuff, just need to iron out their control/approach" pitchers that bounce from team to team and get about five gazillion chances?

Anyway, the industry has soured on Huber, and his time with the Royals is just about done. We'll move on. I don't know if it was because he came from a different culture and subtly threw people off unintentionally or didn't properly demonstrate appropriate jock-behavior, or if he's a legitimately bad guy or if he's just, ultimately, not good enough. I do know that he never got a proper shot with this team, and I'd be stunned if that didn't effect his semi-downturn last year. Still, we'll never really know how he might have done, because he never got a chance.

For most of us, that last bit sounds familiar. We had a good tryout, but didn't make the team. We thought we did a good job on our college application, but didn't get into our top choice. We studied for the LSAT, but then choked on exam day. We thought we nailed the interview, but they hired someone else. We joined the Army to be in Special Forces, but ended up inside a tank. We wanted to be a screenwriter in Hollywood, but after six months had to move back home and find a "real job". Maybe we just weren't good enough or maybe we just needed someone to believe in us who, finally, didn't. Neither option is really comforting.

So in that small way, as a loser slogging away in the Midwest, you can understand why I'll always find someone like Justin Huber easier to root for than one of the golden ones.