The Futility Infielder

Hope Springs Eternal

Here in New York, it isn't much of a stretch to envision the local nine embarking upon a playoff-caliber season. Seven straight postseason appearances have raised the bar far beyond that measure; a playoff run isn't just hoped for, it's expected by Boss Steinbrenner. The Yankees hunt bigger game(s), and the braintrusts's every major decision is seen through the same filter: "Is this team good enough to win a World Championship?"

Even across town, where they haven't won a World Series since 1986, the bud of optimism (not to be confused with the sport's czar, the Bud of Pessimism) when it comes to the postseason isn't too farfetched. If Mo Vaughn can still hit, if Edgardo Alfonzo regains his form, if Robbie Alomar stays young, and if the rotation holds up... stretches, some of those are, yet at least the players in the mix, and the team itself, have a track record of some success in the not-too-distant past.

But in Kansas City, on the other hand, gloom reigns. For starters, there's the matter of seven straight losing seasons and a last-place finish in the AL Central. And then there's the dismantling of the Royals' nucleus of the few decent hitters they've produced in recent times. In the past two years, the franchise has traded two of its biggest stars--Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye--as they approached free agency and has gotten crapola in return--a bloated has-been of a closer and a glove man with Coors-inflated hitting stats that weren't very good to begin with. Their marquee free-agent signings this winter are Chuck Knoblauch and Michael Tucker. Manager Tony "Sarge" Muser and GM Allard Baird have witlessly conspired to sabotage the careers of promising players like Mark Quinn, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Febles, Dee Brown... and on and on. Owner David Glass seems poised to keep K.C.'s payroll near the bottom of the league. Pundits like Rob Neyer have stopped pulling their hair out over the Royals' bafflingly stupid ways and gone straight to surrender. It ain't pretty.

But here K.C. Star columnist Joe Posnanski, taking a rose-tinted view of the local K.C. nine, says that the Royals can take the AL Central. A laughable proposition in some quarters, but that's not quite the point. For starters, Posnanski invokes the annual tradition of a predecessor at the Star, a writer named Bill Vaughan, who would write similarly optimistic tomes--back when the team in question was the Athleticsm in the days when their best pitcher was a polio survivor. "...[L]ooking back, I'm not sure he was only joking. He had hope," writes Posnanski. "January does that to crazy baseball fans. It turns us into 10-year-old kids."

Fair enough. I'm sure all of us who came to the game at a similarly young age can remember our vain predictions and predilections. Maybe that schlub of a scrub who signed an autograph when he passed through Triple-A for us would lead the big club to glory. Maybe the young fireballer with lousy control would find the strikezone. Maybe that fan would give Reggie's home run ball back and the Sox could beat the Yanks (as my pal Martin memorably suggested in the Bucky Dent game). Childhood is full of such delusions.

Posnanski points out the weakness of the division (the mighty Indians are no more, as their offseason actions in the wake of John Hart's departure clearly indicate), and then runs down the roster, pointing out the plethora of young K.C. arms poised on the brink of Figuring It All Out. And he does have a point, because in these days of large market vs. small, the development of solid starting pitching is the quickest way toward respectability. Take the A's and the Twins, for example.

Posanski's piece is a breezy read, and it's harmless enough in January. But where he falls short in his optimism is failing to include some kind of coup in the organization's so-called braintrust as a necessary first condition to all of this. Tony Muser is a Terrible Manager, a red-ass who believes that machismo at the plate can repeal a fundamental rule of the game--you have to get on base to score runs. In four and a half years at the Royals' helm, he's managed a .426 winning percentage, with a high of 77 wins. Allard Baird, if it's possible, is an even worse GM, having come up virtually empty in trading two stars (one can only shudder to think of the bounty of broken doorknobs and spoiled fish that awaits them when they trade Mike Sweeney to a contender). Baird's idea of improving the club is trading for Donnie Sadler. Enough said.

Smarter men than myself who are more devoted to the Royals (okay, maybe that cancels out the "smarter" part), such as Rany Jazayerli, have pointed out in painstaking detail some of the Royals' more foolish assumptions. In his most recent column over at Baseball Prospectus, Jazayerli (Rob Neyer's former partner in Royal-watching) weighs K.C.'s claims that they couldn't afford Dye or Damon against the motley (and I don't mean Darryl) assortment of players the Royals "can" afford. He also points out that given the current management's ineptitude, their Triple-A rotation stands a good chance of outpitching their major league one:

"There's definitely something wrong when the best thing that can happen to your pitching staff is for one of your projected starters to go down with an injury so that a better pitcher can take his place. That's what the Royals have brought on themselves. Faced with a choice between gambling on one of their many unproven but highly-touted young pitchers, and a proven veteran--proven only in the sense that he's provably mediocre--the Royals have again taken the safe route. Risk aversion dominates the Royals' philosophy at every turn."

Anyway... ya gotta have hope, I guess. I wholeheartedly support the kind of foolish optimism of late winter which Posnanski invokes, and I don't pretend (or care) to know much about the nuances of the Royals' system. But I do think that if you want to restore some hope to what was once a great baseball town, the first order of business is to hand Muser and Baird a blindfold and a cigarette apiece, and usher in the next phase of K.C. baseball with a bang or two. And if you happen to be a columnist covering the home nine, you're certainly better off leading the coup than sitting on your hands and waiting for it to happen.