When Dayton Moore was hired as general manager and David Glass decided it was okay to spend a little money, most of us were sure that the Royals were on the road back to respectability.

Bolstered by a better than it really was September, the Royals won more games in 2008 than they had since 2003 and finished out of last place for the first time since that magical 03 run, too.

There was legitimate thoughts of contending in 2009 from some and certainly expectations of finishing around .500 from most. A few of you sage commenters out there correctly projected that the Royals’ 2008 campaign was skewed by an 18-8 September and forecasted a three or four game decline. Did anyone expect the 2009 Kansas City Royals to be battling the Washington Nationals for the title of worst team in baseball?

Well, welcome to the last week in August, where the Royals are just three and one-half games out of having to negotiate with Bryce Harper next June.

This Royals team has managed to dig into rock bottom in spectacular fashion. They traded their best setup man, Ramon Ramirez, for Coco Crisp: who gave the team six good weeks and is now out until mid-season of 2010. They traded their next best setup man, Leo Nunez, for a designated hitter in Mike Jacobs who might not be better than a guy the team already had in AAA (Kila Kaaihue) and has all of SIX more home runs than the team’s lead off hitter.

This is an organization that pinned its hopes on a second year shortstop in Mike Aviles, who, even before being injured, was a prime candidate for at least some regression. The backup plan? Why Tony Pena Jr., of course!

When Aviles did finally go down (and drew the ire of the organization for hiding his injury and trying to play through it – hell, if Tony Pena Jr. was MY backup, I’d figure I needed to play at all costs, too) the organization panicked into trading an underachieving yet high on potential pitching prospect for an overpaid, underranged shortstop long on reputation and short on production.

Along the way, the Royals have coddled their star closer to the point of making him irrelevant (although it should be noted that Trey Hillman has at last opted to salvage a few games by going outside the box and using Joakim Soria for multiple two inning saves) and overused their staff leader, Gil Meche, to the point that he is a shell of the pitcher he had been the previous two seasons.

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The fall back to baseball’s laughingstock has included posting a sub-five hundred record in games started by the league’s best pitcher (Zack Greinke), sending down third baseman Alex Gordon just last week after rushing him through his rehab from injury (they had 30 days to play him in the minors and instead opted to bring him back two weeks early) and carrying 13 pitchers and three catchers on their 25 man roster.

This past weekend, a sweep at the hands of the Minnesota Twins, a team with no more money than the Royals who happened to draft and develop the heart of their batting order, we saw two different rightfielders (Josh Anderson and Willie Bloomquist) misplay the team out of a victory and multiple bullpen meltdowns highlighted by Kyle Farnsworth’s actual incernation on the mound.

All the while, this organization seems to be sailing serenely forward as if all is going according to plan. They have used just 17 pitchers this season: none of them rookies, four of them (Jamey Wright, Horacio Ramirez, Sidney Ponson and Bruce Chen) vagabond veterans. In fact, not one player has made his major league debut for the Royals this season.

This is an organization that seems to almost be afraid to ‘find out’ about players. They don’t want to play speedy Josh Anderson in centerfield because ‘Kaufmann Stadium has a lot of area to cover’. They don’t want to give Brayan Pena three months to prove or disprove if he is a starting catcher because they want Miguel Olivo’s ‘slug’ in the lineup. A call up of Kila Kaaihue or Jordan Parraz (before he got hurt…again) would have necessitated exposing one of the teams EIGHT relievers to waivers. GASP! The horror!

Submarining reliever Chris Hayes or fireballing reliever Carlos Rosa or Chris Nicoll, Jason Godin, Victor Marte or even Brandon Duckworth or Lenny DiNardo, might help this wretched assembly of ineffectiveness that Kansas City calls a bullpen. Instead, the Royals stay with the same group. I’m sure if Doug Waechter had not been injured all would have been solved.

Trust me, I tried to ‘trust the process’. I thought Ramirez for Crisp was a reasonable gamble and even was not abhorred by the Nunez for Jacbos deal. I was not against Gil Meche throwing 132 pitches – remember the last batter was a 10 pitch plate appearance – although the idea of tossing him 121 pitches after he claimed of a dead arm on July 1st remains a criminal offense. I believed in Juan Cruz and thought he and Ron Mahay would be a capable setup tandem

Well, I was wrong, but I’m willing to admit that. By mid-June, I was thinking about changes that could be made to improve this team: if not for 2009, at least for 2010. It is easy for me to admit mistakes, given that my quotes don’t get published in the newspaper and I don’t have to sign the checks for said mistakes. I get that it is hard, maybe counterproductive, for Dayton Moore and crew to say ‘hey, we screwed up, we’ll have to start over, again’.

My concern, however, is that they truly don’t believe they have done anything wrong: that, if not for injuries, the Royals would be in contention. That is the only reasoning I can see for this organization’s complete lack of substantial movement, outside of acquiring Betancourt, as the season crumbled around them.

Die hard Royals fans know baseball and they continue to show up season after season. They follow the draft with great anticipation and many can name thirty or more of the players in the minor leagues. They care, period.

The casual fans may have rightfully packed it in. The ones that remain, going to games, devouring every morsel of Royals’ coverage, writing and commenting on blogs and forums: they get it. They know baseball, good and bad, and they know when they are being laughed at.

Thank you, Dayton Moore, David Glass and Trey Hillman, you have led us back…all the way to 2004. I bet Ruben Mateo and Abraham Nunez are waiting by the phone right now.

There were once high hopes for the Kansas City Royals, but no longer.   While the problems plaguing the Royals began even as they raced out of the 2009 starting gate to an 18-11 record and three game Central Division lead, the last thirty days provide a perfect illustration of the state of this franchise.

Since June 25th, Kansas City has won just eight out of twenty-six games.   Along the way, they have:

• Scored 89 runs, 7 less than the next lowest scoring American League team and 90 less than the Angels, who lead the lead over that period of time
• Hit just 18 home runs, 3 less than the Orioles, 4 less than the A’s and 14 fewer than the league leading Tigers
• Struck out 185 times, fifth worst in the league
• Walked only 60 times – dead last by 8
• Compiled a 4.82 earned run average – 12th in the American League
• Walked 99 opposing batters – only the Blue Jays have issued more free passes
• Thrown 15 wild pitches – most in the American League and more than the Red Sox, Twins, Tigers and Orioles combined
• Given up 33 home runs – second only to the Angels in most allowed
• Blown 6 saves – only Detroit has been worse
• The bullpen, excluding closer Joakim Soria, has allowed 44 earned runs and 44 walks in 61 innings of work

In addition to the above, over the course of the entire season, the Royals have committed more errors (71) than every other AL team except Seattle and given that Kansas City acquired Mariners’ shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt just prior to the All-Star break, they may well be in position to change that ranking.

Not to worry about base running, either.   Using Bill James’ plus/minus base running evaluation, Kansas City is the worst team in baseball at running the bases…..by a large margin.

Simply put, the Kansas City Royals are a bad baseball team at this point in time.  The question becomes, can this be fixed?  The answer, sadly, is probably ‘no’.

Even as recently as last month, I thought the Royals could at least be respectable if David DeJesus returned to form and Joakim Soria got healthy.  Well, DeJesus has gone .314/.402/.431 over the past thirty days and overall team improvement has not come. Even with Mark Teahen posting a thirty day OPS of .850 and Billy Butler one of .876, the Royals offense has been anemic.

Joakim Soria has indeed returned and allowed just two runs and eight hits over 11 innings of work while striking out sixteen batters.  Yet he has appeared in only eleven games, three of those blowout losses.   In fact, manager Trey Hillman did not use Soria even once in a recent three game set against Tampa Bay in which the Royals’ bullpen blew eighth inning leads in all three contests.

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How bad is it in Kansas City?  Ask the guys in the starting rotation. Zack Greinke has a 2.43 ERA over his last five starts, but only two wins.   Brian Bannister has a respectable 3.52 ERA over his last six starts, but only a 1-3 record to show for it.   While Luke Hochevar has stepped up to become a quality middle of the rotation guy, and rotation stalwart Gil Meche missed his first start in two and one-half seasons last week.

That paints a bleak picture for the Royals that might lead many to believe the Royals will be big sellers on the trade market.  Yet, Royals’ GM Dayton Moore seems content to ‘stay the course’ and ‘trust the process’, believing that injuries and bad luck have had more to due with Kansas City’s decline than the actual roster construction.

While deals may yet be made, the truth is that the Royals will not trade Greinke, Meche or Soria and place a much higher value on Alex Gordon and Billy Butler than the other 29 teams do.   As such, the only trading chips of value left are DeJesus, Teahen, Brian Bannister and Luke Hochevar – all four are believed to be part of the core group of players that the Royals believe can lead them to contention in the future.

All indications out of Kansas City point towards few, if any, deadline deals and likely nothing of an earth-shaking variety.   The Royals believe they are on the right track.   The numbers seem to say otherwise.

When I last reported on the Royals, the team was sitting just one game out of first place in the American League Central with a respectable 20-18 record.   Sure,

Over the last twenty-seven games, the Royals have lost eighteen.   Fourteen times they have scored three runs or less and nine times they have allowed their opponents to score eight runs or more. After showing signs of life last week by winning five of six, Kansas City fell back to earth with a thud by dropping back to back games by the identical ugly score of 12-5.

I ended last month’s column with two keys to watch:  the healthy and productive return of closer Joakim Soria and the performance of slumping outfielder David DeJesus.   Soria was activated from the disabled list on June 2nd and since that time has appeared in just five games and only one of those appearances was with the game on the line.   Of course, in that one game, Soria was tagged with the blown save.  As for DeJesus, he has posted a line of .253/.302/.384 since May 18th:  hardly the resurgence we were looking for.

To be fair, the Royals have been hammered by injuries as of late.  Coco Crisp went from day

to day status, to the bereavement list, back to day to day and then, finally and thankfully, to the disabled list.   His absence robs the team of its leader in walks, stolen bases and, by far, of its best defensive player.

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Crisp was joined on the disabled list by last year’s rookie phenom, shortstop Mike Aviles, whose stiff forearm injury remains a mystery. Backup catcher John Buck also is on the disabled list with a back injury which, with Alex Gordon out since mid-April and not due back until the All-Star Break, leaves the club without three regulars and a key bench player.

It is hard to blame the injury bug too much (except in the case of Crisp) given that Alberto Callaspo, who got playing time only when Mark Teahen slid over to third to cover Gordon’s absence, leads the team with an .822 OPS and Teahen himself is hitting .284/.347/.441.   Add to that the performance of Willie Bloomquist, now getting most of the reps at short, who has stolen 12 of 14 bases and checked in with a .290/.348/.386 line.

The injuries would not have devastated the Royals had the middle of their order produced anything at all.   Check out the batting lines of Kansas City’s three-four-five hitters since May 18th:

Billy Butler – .299/.321/.421

Mike Jacobs – .210/.304/.358 – 2 homers/25 strikeouts

Jose Guillen – .253/.317/.411

Pretty easy to see why this team is almost allergic to scoring runs, isn’t it?

All the starting pitching in the world won’t help a team win if it cannot score runs.   Despite struggles by Brian Bannister and Kyle Davies since last month (6.15 and 5.39 ERA respectively since May 18th) and a return to mere mortal status by Zack Greinke (3.95 ERA over his last 41 innings), Kansas City’s starting rotation still boasts the second lowest earned run average in the American League.    Despite pitching in front of the second lowest scoring lineup in the league, Royals’ starters have managed a respectable 23-25 record – and that includes six starts by Sidney Ponson and one by Horacio Ramirez!   Take those two out of the equation and KC starters are 22-19.

Lack of run support is not a starting pitcher’s only problem in Kansas City.   They are faced with the specter of a bullpen that ranks 11th in the American League with an ERA of 4.65 and a WHIP of 1.51. Royals’ relievers have posted a 6-11 record with 10 blown saves. Given manager Trey Hillman’s curious use of bullpen arms when they are going good, imagine the debacle when he has few (if any) options in relief.   It is unsightly to say the least.

Like a bad commercial, however, THAT’S NOT ALL!    The Royals add to their problems by being one of the worst fielding squads in baseball.   According to data from The Hardball Times, Kansas City is dead last in the American League in Revised Zone Rating.   The infield is 12th in the league with a RZR of just .753 and the outfield is tied for 10th.

Using the Plus/Minus fielding rankings, Kansas City has cost itself 24 runs thus far:  only Baltimore at -27 is worse.  By comparison, the league leader is Texas, who has saved 37 runs.    We do not need the newest defensive metrics, however, to illustrate how bad the Royals are defensively.   Over the course of the season, Kansas City has been tagged with 38 unearned runs – EIGHT more than the next worst team.

So, they can’t field, don’t hit very well and have suspect pitching beyond the one-two duo of Zack Greinke and Gil Meche.  Hopeless, right?   Same old same old in Kansas City?

Not quite.   You see, this Royals team was playing good baseball as recently as six weeks ago and, despite the litany of awful that has been Kansas City recently, they remain just five and one-half games out of the AL Central lead.   Without much work, I can find almost as much wrong with the three teams in front of the Royals as I can with the Royals themselves.

So, this writer, like most Royals’ fans, is discouraged but hardly resigned to the usual fate. A little dose of good health, a hitter or two getting hot and someone stepping up in the bullpen (the acquisition of a competent shortstop wouldn’t hurt, either) could put Kansas City right back in the race.

I left you with two keys to watch last month.  I will leave you with three this time.

First, will Mike Jacobs continue to flounder or will he begin hitting with power once more?   Second, will Juan Cruz, who has allowed 15 runs in his last 16 innings, bounce back and become a reliable set-up man as he was in April?   Third, will Luke Hochevar, who is 2-2 with a 4.50 ERA since his recall from AAA, develop into a reliable number three starter over the next four weeks?

In the first six weeks of 2009, however, that has changed. Sure, there is some of the ‘fall back to earth’ mutterings, but more and more national discussions view Kansas City as having a real chance to be a factor in the race for the American League Central. For those of us who were around during the glory years of the franchise, when the Royals annually made a run at the playoffs, it is a welcome return to scoreboard watching as the home team lingers near the top of the Central Division.

The preceding paragraph is not to say that the all is well in the Land of Powder Blue. This is a Royals team with plenty of faults and much to prove. Currently standing at 20-18 at the time of this writing, one game out of first place, Kansas City will be hard pressed to stick with the Tigers if they go on an extended run of .600 baseball. Luckily, that looks unlikely at this point and, barring such a run by Detroit or anyone else, 86 wins may take the A.L. Central. That gives this Kansas City team a real chance.

Looking Back

The Royals started the season in Chicago where the inexplicable signing of Kyle Farnsworth to a multi-year deal exploded on them immediately. A solid Gil Meche opening day effort was spoiled when Farnsworth gave up an eighth inning home run to Jim Thome. It was the first of a series of bad outings by Farnsworth (at one point the Royals were 7-5 and Farnsworth had three of the losses) and a series of odd bullpen decisions by manager Trey Hillman.

Kansas City rebounded to take two of three from the Sox, returned home for a 3-3 home stand and then followed that up with a 3-3 road trip. It was at the end of the team’s first home stand that they lost third baseman Alex Gordon to hip surgery that will keep him out until late June and at the end of the road trip that it was revealed that All-Star closer Joakim Soria had a sore shoulder and would need to be rested. Despite those losses and having to play most of April without Jose Guillen, the Royals finished up the month with a 12-10 record.

Of course, the story of April was Zack Greinke, who went 5-0 and did not give up an earned run until allowing two during his fifth start on April 29^th. To date, Greinke is 7-1, having thrown 60 innings and allowed just four earned runs and forty hits.

The Royals were also bolstered when Brian Bannister was recalled from Omaha on April 22^nd and in the five starts since, has spun an earned run average of just 1.80 over 30 innings of work.

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Offensively, the aforementioned injury to Gordon, forced a move of Mark Teahen (who had won the second base job in the spring – his fourth position in four years) back to his original third base spot and allowed Alberto Callaspo to take over the everyday second base duties. Callaspo currently is hitting .341 with a .396 on-base percentage with 15 doubles.

The unexpected offensive contribution from Callaspo, together with that of super utility man Willie Bloomquist (.854 OPS) have been crucial as two Royals’ regulars have struggled mightily out of the gate. David DeJesus

(.237/.288/.393) and Mike Aviles (.194/.221/.269) are performing well below even the most pessimistic projections. It is noteworthy, however, that DeJesus tripled and doubled in his last game and it was revealed that Aviles was fighting a stiff forearm all season.

Looking Forward

With Greinke simply being absolutely dominant and showing no signs of dropping off, the Royals’ rotation will continue to be their strength. While no one envisions Bannister continuing at his current level, there are signs that he is closer to his 2007 form (when he challenged for Rookie of the Year honors) than to his 2008 form (when he challenged for the title of worst starting pitcher in baseball). With Kyle Davies providing more solid outings than not and Gil Meche expected to rebound to top of the rotation form as he recaptures stamina lost from some minor early season back troubles, this team can legitimately expect to be in most games.

Kansas City recently called up former first overall pick Luke Hochevar to become the fifth member of the rotation. After dominating in AAA, Hochevar has been a disaster his first two times out (10 runs in 5 innings of work), but the club announced they will stick with him, for now. How he performs over the next month may go a long way in determining if the Royals can make a significant move past the .500 mark.

Of course, all bets are off if closer Joakim Soria does not return quickly and in top form. There is no structural damage to the shoulder and club officials (and Soria) believe that fifteen days of rest may be all that is needed at this point. In the interim, great efforts from Juan Cruz and Jamey Wright out of the bullpen have eased the loss of Soria, but over the long term the Royals simply need The Mexicutioner at the back of their pen.

Offensively, the Royals need consistency. While they have scored eighteen more runs than their opponents, Kansas City has had maddening stretches of bad offense. After scoring forty-two runs in their first six games of May, the Royals proceeded to score just twelve in their next five. They have been held to two runs or less in THIRTEEN games already this season.

There is very little offensive help in the high minors and what there might be is at positions that are jammed as it is. With Mike Jacobs, who leads the team in home runs, and Billy Butler, who is emerging as a real threat in the middle of the lineup, already on the roster, there is no room for a first baseman/designated hitter – the position played by Kila Kaaihue, Ryan Shealy and J.R. House (yes, he’s a catcher, but not really). Along with Luis Hernandez, those are the prominent bats in AAA right now. Hernandez, by the way, is already up with the team and has never shown the ability to hit at the big league level.

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To improve offensively, the Royals need David DeJesus to bounce back to the form he has shown in each of his first five big league seasons. They need Coco Crisp to continue to get on base at the top of the order (.361 OBP) and Butler to continue to emerge.

With Callaspo hitting well, it relieves some of the pressure on the non-producing shortstop position, but while Mark Teahen has been decent (.805 OPS) at third, he has struggled in May. That puts pressure on Jose Guillen and Mike Jacobs to produce…or at least not be in slumps at the same time. Both have statistical lines that overstate their contributions to the offense to date. For instance, Jacobs’ last two home runs have been in blowouts and his .855 OPS is mitigated to some extent by 37 strikeouts in 35 games. Guillen who also has a good OPS of .817 is slugging just .419. Given his lack of speed and a probable unsustainable on-base percentage of .398 (watch Jose’s bat for a week and you’ll know what I mean), the Royals need Guillen to hit for power sooner rather than later.

In summary, the Royals are relevant once more and are more likely than not to stick in the A.L. Central race all season. They are not one of the best teams in baseball and they are most assuredly a team with some major problems, but in Kansas City, just being in contention in late May is something to get excited about.

I will leave you with two things to watch prior to next month’s update on the Royals. First, when does Joakim Soria come back and how he pitches upon his return. Second, how David DeJesus hits in the next four weeks. Those two factors may well determine the tone of next month’s update.