a recent post on ye old royalboard.com pointed out that carlos beltran has an opportunity to become one of MLB's few 40/40 guys (40 home runs, 40 stolen bases).

and my question is, how can you possibly like this guy?

let's see, here's his splits for just this year (yes, i know the formatting is fucked up. i'm not fixing it. if you care, you can check it here):

YEAR G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS
2004 - AL 69 266 51 74 19 2 15 51 37 44 14 3 .278 .367 .534 .901
2004 - NL 56 210 41 55 12 1 20 44 31 35 19 0 .262 .360 .614 .975

he hits for a poor average this year, especially after the trade, but according to sabermetric thinking, we apparently don't care about that...so, in fewer games and fewer at-bats, he has more home runs and a higher OPS, plus comparable other peripherals. what is it, more effort now that he's out of kansas city? is he happy that he's now on a winning team (ha!)...what?

anyway, who cares? i can't believe that any KC Royals fans would root for this guy. we brought him up, we groomed him, we suffered through the awful sophomore campaign, as well as his lame attitude -- including his gigantic crybaby failure over being asked to report for a rehab assignment (hey, carlos, all we were asking is that you shaped your shit up) -- and waited and waited for him to finally break through, only to see him demand SO MUCH after a couple of years that there was no way in hell we could afford him. it wouldn't bother me to see him go all jermaine dye on us and suffer a season-ending injury. every season.

i don't blame him for wanting to make a lot of money, and i don't blame royals management for not wanting to pay him that ridiculous sum...but where does that leave us as fans? i have no reason to like any of these guys. so, no, i don't wish him continued success.

think about it: mike sweeney is a fan "favorite". yes, I know, a lot of people don't like his lame-ass "good guy" act or his overwhelmingly ridiculous faith in jesus to help his game along. but that's mike sweeney the gigantic dork, for the most part. the other part is the fact that he gets injured every year. multiple times. his hitting is always less than he's capable of because he's NEVER ever 100%. never going to be, either. and, now, he's done for the year.

so, how much did mike sweeney make sitting on the bench last night? $68,000. each night. every night. every game, no matter if he sucks, or if he plays, or if he stays at home in kansas city recuperating. mike sweeney makes more on a "day off" than I hope to make if I get promoted to management at work. mike makes enough during one game to pay off everything I own for the entire year, and still have tens of thousands of dollars left over. and that's one game. there are 161 more games left to completely have every single thing paid for over and over and just massive amounts of money left. mike seems like a nice guy. he's taken advantage of the opportunities presented to him.

he's still a complete, total asshole. just add him to the list. there are thousands of millionaires and billionaires bilking idiots out of their money. and there's always a willing supply of chumps forking over their hard-earned, well-limited funds to watch these guys spit on them repeatedly. mike sweeney makes money because his bosses are willing to pay it. his bosses are willing to pay it because royals fans keep putting money in their pocket, either through going to games, or paying taxes to kansas city, or buying their crappy overpriced merchandise. WHY?

carlos beltran thinks so much of himself – thinks he is SO good – that he deserves $92,600 every game. 162 games a year. for 5-6 years. whether he plays or not. whether he jermaine dye's himself in the first game next year and never plays again. $92,600 to watch baseball on TV like the rest of us chumps. he might – *might* – have enough to pony up $200 for the MLB extra innings package if he budgets well.

this makes me sick. I try not to think about this bullshit. I don't want to be a part of it, and it almost makes me feel ashamed that I continue to support this horrible system. these guys don't care what the fuck happens. management really doesn't care – as long as they don't lose money! WHAT?!? what kind of business is this? where did this idea come in: "It's ok to own a team, as long as I don't lose money on it!" what's that? investing in business isn't a risk? you mean multi-millionaires and billionaires shouldn't have to worry about investing in a high profile, fun business and losing money!? yeah, that's exactly what we should worry about. god forbid these complete horrible assholes don't lose 1/200th of their net worth due to awful stupid decisions they themselves made. so sad. these guys need a fuckin fork in the eyes...and we'll follow that up by jabbing the players with the same utensil.

so, who cares what the royals do? I try not to think about it, because then I won't want to follow it. but why follow it anyway? all the royals care about is whether or not we'll spend more money to see them. really makes you feel good.

well, I've succeeded in making myself sick again.

god bless,
Joe Blow.

hi. ok, royal blues is not dead.

that's about the best I can say. to be honest with you loyal royal types (the two of you that might still check in here): are you following this team? how closely? to make myself sound as I don't want to sound, I'll still say: as I get a little older, and have followed them for a little longer, I realize that the amount of energy I've invested in this losing team year after year listening to complete crap just isn't worth the dwindling amount of time I have available now that I've truly been a full-time member of the working force for a few years now. I mean, I love the royals, I truly do. but, sometimes, it's a losing proposition. I didn't think it would happen to me, but in some ways, it has.

I mean, to either date myself or prove what a kid I am or whatever, I'll say: I just had my 25th birthday last weekend. my presents: a royal blue hooded sweatshirt (that says "royals" on the front) from my girlfriend and a royal blue jacket (that says "royals" on the front) from my mom. something tells me the people closest to me somehow know I'm a huge royals fan. no one really knows why, but the knowledge that I just somehow never give up on these chumps has been burned into just about everyone that knows me.

and the main question *is*, "why?"

well, why do you love these guys? mine has most to do with 1) I'm from kansas city 2) I'm a baseball fan 3) you have to root for your hometown team! it's that simple. I mean, my mom thinks it has to do with my grandma being a huge royals fan, and I don't doubt that's true, too. she's the one that took me to many games when I was little. but, playing baseball (and basketball) when I was a kid, I always looked up to my local teams – royals, missouri tigers, chiefs..it's just...what other teams are you gonna root for? you can't just pick and choose. you can't decide who you like based on who's good. and any royals fans know this. but, as easy as it is for people who either hopped on a bandwagon because a team always contends or happened to be born in a storied, large-market team's city to laugh at fans of a now perpetually hopeless cause like the royals, it just ingrains it deeper. you can't give up on a team. you can hate it when everyone who makes fun of the team hops back on when they start winning, but you still can't give up on them. I mean, last year (2003) when the royals were winning and on top of the division, I went to fewer games than I'd been to in four or five seasons. I loved the team just as much as ever – in fact, I lived and breathed every game – but something about the people giving me shit for liking a bunch of losers suddenly being hyped to go to the games rubbed me wrong. but I guess that's the plight of every winning team's old fans. yeah, I haven't been there from the beginning, but I'm as old a fan as I can be. you can't wish for much else.

and, so, it's sad to watch this team. it's hard to watch them make bad moves. it's hard to watch them relegated to flipping coins into a fountain, wishing that the guys dropped by the absolute worst teams will convert themselves into diamonds. it's sad to watch professionals play defense like the dummies on my (old) softball team. it's awful to both listen to the team hype pitcher after pitcher, and then watch pitcher after pitcher both run themselves and the team into the ground. I, just...I like allard baird right now. I didn't at first, but I do now. but he still hasn't figured out exactly what he's doing. listen to ryan lefebvre and fred white tonight. I like ryan; I don't like fred. but they both love david eckstein, a guy sabermetric guys would tell you isn't a good player, doesn't belong on a major league squad, and all that. but, like they're saying (and I'm not vouching for david eckstein, let me say that – I don't know a lot about him), "he just knows how to play". seriously, fuck tools. fuck "potential". you can watch guys, and see if they know how to play. if they make the right decisions, and know what they're doing at the plate or on the mound or in the field. those are the guys you want. unfortunately – and I mean, yes, it takes a special type of talent to succeed at the major league level, but we're assuming the high minor-league guys at least have the potential, or they wouldn't be there – why is kansas city stocked with guys at pretty much every position that just don't get it? guys that can't read pitches and know nothing about cut-off men and can't change speeds for the life of them and can't keep their head in *every* game? there's something wrong. there's something wrong with the training staff, and there's something wrong with the manager, and there's something wrong with our player / personnel people, but, honestly, our players just plain don't know how to play. and we have no one who can teach it to them AT ALL. so, for this season, I just can't invest myself in listening to every subtle nuance of the complete stupidity of this team.

but, anyway, I'll try to be back to actually offer up suggestions on how this team can get better. at some point.

later.

your pal,
Joe Blow.

well, I wasn't quite as eloquent as I anticipated in the last post. throw some cheap liquor in front of a disgruntled royals fan and sit him down in front of a computer...and that's what you get.
anyway, my basic point was, well, a few things:

1) sabermetrics are not the end-all be-all. I was interested in seeing what they were all about before all the furor exploded over the last couple of years, but as I looked into it, it just seemed that some of these guys are trying too hard and laying claim to too much. sure, there are benefits to looking at more than just the basic stats like batting average, RBIs, wins, etc – but that's obvious. intelligent baseball fans have known that for many, many years. the fact that there are people making decisions for major league squads that don't seem particularly adept at making good decisions shouldn't be surprising. look around at the place you work – how many people above you do you think make great decisions all the time? the fact is, people can rank very high in command and still not be qualified to hold that position. much has been made of the saber-GMs making their way into the ranks in a few MLB franchises, and it's been proclaimed that these sabermetric ideas are just now really "catching on" in major league baseball. but it's pretty silly if you think about it: the most basic ones – getting on base, getting a lot of extra base hits, don't get thrown out stealing a lot, strike out a lot of guys – come on people, these are revelations? a lot of the stats are so convoluted and context-dependant that they go against themselves from year to year. royals stadium moved the fences in some parts of the park back TEN FEET, and suddenly the park goes from one of the highest scoring parks to one of the toughest to score runs in? oriole park at camden yards changes nothing and completely reverses roles? how can you draw any meaningful inferences from the park factors the last couple of years? seriously? it's easy to sum up numbers and provide analysis of who kicked ass and who sucked in the past. the problem is baseball teams have to project it into the future, guarantee millions, and hope when all the baseball geeks sit around at the end of the next few seasons, they're not looking at that team's players and saying, "wow, what an idiot, they totally blew it signing this guy. this team is being run into the ground."

2) baseball decisions aren't made through a cold, hard look at numbers. if so, wouldn't the royals still have an outfield of ibanez / beltran / dye (not including johnny damon cause I hate him...I hate dye, too, but I think he'd still be here) right now instead of brown / dejesus / mateo? don't you think the minnesota twins would have rather had a couple years of mark prior already than an injury-plagued season of joe mauer? and don't tell me the twins wouldn't have taken prior if they could have. the thing is, it's pretty easy to look at some guys and accurately predict they're gonna kick ass. and, for every guy you can do that for, the royals rank somewhere in the 30's in "order of preference" for that player. unless it's mike sweeney, which a lot of royals fans feel good about hating. it's easier for fans of other teams to chide a team like the royals for not spending as much money as them than it is for fans of those teams to admit that it's just not fair to expect that. they'll bring up the A's and the Twins and the Marlins. what do those teams have in common? they caught lightning in a bottle, with a lot of young players all turning in good seasons at the same time. they didn't just get solid seasons from a couple of key players and mediocre performances from the rest – they got it from enough players to make it count. it's really a pretty fine line from poor team to decent contender, and a couple of players truly can make a difference. the royals haven't found that at the same time the past few years. remember, back in 1990, KC had the HIGHEST payroll in the major leagues – yep, $23,873,745. the next year, Oakland had the highest paid team. now they're considered the bottom suckers, though oakland not so much so anymore. but it's completely out of fuckin control, and the fact that a couple of teams have managed to be good for a couple of years due to their players being too young to be making the amount of money comparable to their production speaks much more to luck than to a particular strategy's success. like I said last time, imagine oakland had drafted kyle snyder instead of barry zito in 1999, or the twins picking dee brown instead of jacque jones in 1996. sometimes players work out, and sometimes they don't. but a lot of times it's not fair to fault the decisions after you already know the conclusion. likewise, deifying people after they're successful is a heck of a lot easier than knowing they've done well at the time the decisions were made. rob neyer completely chastised allard baird for letting raul ibanez put on a royals uniform at all – I'd say that worked out pretty well. almost everybody at baseballprospectus considered carlos pena a can't-miss, oakland-superstar in-the-bag guy, yet oakland later shipped him off to detroit, where he's been quietly average. what – the magical A's couldn't groom him into a superstar? what happened? erubiel durazo was another favorite. he's having a pretty good season for oakland at age 29. according to a lot of sabermetric guys, he's over the hump and going downhill. he makes $2,100,000 this year. that would make him the 5th highest paid player on the royals -- behind sweeney (good), gonzalez (prick), randa (gone after this year), anderson (bust), and santiago (not very useful). will he make more next season? yes. though, current "wisdom" says he's "undervalued" in the saber-market. as soon as he makes more: he's overvalued. he'll he'll be 3 years past 27 next year! it get stupid. he'll be useful, but as a mostly immobile first-baseman / DH, his contribution will be REPLACEABLE at best. pretty much every player is replaceable in saber-world. if a baseball analyst makes prediction after prediction, they'll fail, they'll succeed, and they'll get a couple draws. it doesn't matter. if a baseball GM does that, it'll cost 'em millions, their team – which has a small shot of winning anyway – most likely won't make one of the 8 playoff spots, it'll be a "total failure", and every decision they made that didn't turn out awesome will be pointed to as proof of incompetence. stats guys – maybe you should keep a running total of your failed predictions, too...we'll judge your numbers at the end of the season, maybe cut you for a rookie making the minimum, and laugh at anybody willing to take you on, since you're obviously "replaceable" for cheap.

3) don't any of these stat guys care about anything except offense? I know, there are defensive metrics out there, but they're not given near enough weight. and, yes, I know "THE OAKLAND A'S ARE DEVELOPING NEW DEFENSIVE METRICS." I don't know that you'll ever be able to judge defense by numbers. you just have to watch guys. that's the only way to know. and, honestly, I think a brilliant defensive guy like rey sanchez at least used to be is worth more than he's given credit for. his contract demand after leaving the royals was silly, but playing sparkling defense and hitting an "empty" .280 contributes more than current thinking would lead you to believe.

4) the most undervalued player trait: intelligence. unfortunately, the most athletically gifted guys are usually some of the dumbest, and EVERY TEAM IN BASEBALL values athletic gifts over intelligence. so it is..

* * * * * *

I went to the royals game on Friday night, watching them lose to cleveland 7-6 in 11 innings. it was an unexpected experience – first of all, 32,000 people were there when it was all said and done, about 20,000 more than was there at first pitch. we moved from the hy-vee view level to the old G.A. seats, and were fortunate enough to pick two seats pretty far back that happened not to be taken, as just about every other seat around us filled in. the game was bleak at first, as brian anderson was announced as the starting pitcher. and then he pitched. down 5-0 early, the royals battled back, tying the game, before giving up a run in the 8th. then came the 9th... with dejesus on second and two out, we cheered. a wild pitch sent him to third and, as we secretly wished for another, randa walked...and then (and then...ah ah!) sweeney ripped a double down the left field line on the first pitch. unfortunately, joe randa had an extra helping of gravy in the clubhouse before the game, which slowed him down and took an "OH MY GOD, WE JUST WON IT!!" excitement down to a "how in the world did he get thrown out?!? oh yeah, it's joe randa..." feeling within a couple seconds. they absolutely should have sent him, but they also could have maybe possibly thought about pinch-running for him – since desi relaford (who had pinch-hit earlier in the inning) came in to play defense for him in the 10th anyway. then the royals almost coughed up a run on a wild pitch in the 10th, as the ball bounced off buck and sailed HIGH in the air – only to see him run it down, flip to cerda, and record an out in one breathtaking moment. breathtaking because we had all already used it cussing up a storm as the ball floated high in the air towards the backstop. I was VERY surprised at the way the royals fans in attendance stayed *loud* and into the game. they were very excited. I mean, it was buck night and fireworks night, but everyone was into the game. and then the royals lost, and we nodded our heads with expectedness.

Saturday, I went to a t-bones game. this was the first t-bones game I'd ever been to, and, honestly, I can't say I was too impressed. this was definitely minor league, from the game to the "entertainment" to the crowd. the only thing not minor league is the prices – these guys realize they're nobodies and they suck, right? the tickets were only a little lower than the royals, and the merchandise was just as much. not a chance I'm buying that shit. the game was full of sloppy offense and miserable defense and, seriously, pitchers *I* could hit. I happened to get a seat in the second row directly behind home plate – and thank god for nylon nets, or else I would have taken a line drive directly in the face – but I was able to read the pitches in plenty of time to know where they were going. I thought it was really neat to be able to sit in that spot and so close to the game, since I will never, ever get that opportunity at a royals game, but I wasn't impressed with the pitching. the highest anyone got was 86 (very rarely), and most pitches topped out at about 82 on a fastball. not to mention that half of the pitchers were sidearmers, and that almost every hitter bats about .235. the t-bones have one big boy, eddie pearson, who most definitely won't play for them next year, as he can certainly hit. not sure about his fielding since he was a DH Saturday, though I'm sure he's a first baseman. but, as long as he can actually catch a ball, he's got a leg up on most of the guys. what do these guys do when baseball season is over? they have to have shitty jobs, as playing for the t-bones surely couldn't pay the bills all year, and what job's gonna give you every summer off to play minor-minor league baseball? they have to know there's absolutely no future in pro baseball for any of 'em, right? watching this game was like watching one of my softball games – most teams don't go out and win the game so much as they wait for the other team to screw up. this was no different. anyway, the t-bones eventually won 9-4, the between-innings "entertainment" was horrifically awful, not only were the fireworks lame but they left the freakin' ballpark lights on for the grounds crew, everything cost just as much as a royals game, and "free parking" means you park in an unmowed field.

so, it's back to the K for me..