Kansas City Fool's Gold

When have we seen enough?  How many times can a pitcher utterly fail?  How many times will a team run a guy out and leave your team with little chance of winning?  I guess if you run a small market baseball team and drafted a guy first overall, the answer is indefinitely.

Luke Hochevar has over 600 career innings and over 100 career starts.  Not counting 4 appearances in 2007, Hochevar is in his fifth full season.  His lowest ERA is 4.68 and only once has his WHIP been below 1.427.  Because of a nice second half last season, he had a career low WHIP of 1.283.  It turned out to be fool’s gold.

He looked to have finally turned a corner last season.  In the second half, he turned in a respectable 3.52 ERA, 1.134 WHIP, and 7.7 K/9ip.  Expectations were high in 2012 for the former number one overall draft pick.  Fantasy experts were listing him as a big sleeper and the Royals were looking for him to prove that their infinite patience in him was justified.  Many, including myself, really thought maybe the light bulb had finally clicked on.  Unfortunately, it had not.

In six starts, Hochevar has only thrown 28 innings and is supporting a downright ugly 9.00 ERA.  In the past, he has shown a penchant for looking brilliant for 3, 4 , sometimes 5 innings then he just loses it completely, allowing fists full of runs.  This year, those innings have been early in the game, crippling the bullpen.  He hasn’t been walking an inordinate number of batters but has been getting hammered.  He has allowed 39 hits in 28 innings.  He is pounding the middle of the strike zone, never an ideal place to be against major league batters.  Check out this graph of his pitch location from texasleaguers.com.

Note the cluster of strikes in what is the general wheelhouse of most big leagues.  Throwing strikes is great but you can’t just throw it down the middle.  If a guy hasn’t learned this little tidbit after 600 innings, I doubt he will ever will.

So, what should the Royals do with this albatross?  Kansas City suffers from a horrible lack of even mediocre depth in their rotation.  Now, with Jonathan Sanchez (another apparent mistake and another article all together) on the DL, it appears the Royals won’t be able to do anything with Hochevar until Sanchez returns, and even then it is doubtful KC can come up with another starter.  Fourteen months ago, the Royals had 5 top pitching prospects but only Danny Duffy has really started to pitch to his potential.  There is no immediate help in the minors.  I would suggest that as soon as Sanchez comes back, they should send Aaron Crow to AAA and begin to stretch him out a bit.  Let him rejoin the club when he as built up some stamina and push Hochevar to the pen.  Hochevar has shown superlative stuff in the past, albeit in small doses.  He wouldn’t be the first pitcher ever to go to the bullpen and discover how to pitch.  Maybe he can learn to at least be a decent contributor to the team.

Who knows if the Royals will do anything in the near future.  Maybe Hochevar can turn it around in his next few starts.  Again, anyone, including Dayton Moore, who believes that will happen, is just fooling himself.  I don’t think I would ever trust him to be a reliable cog for my team again.  Considering the Royals ran Kyle Davies out to the mound for several years doesn’t lead me to believe they will do anything with Hochevar either.  If nothing else, the Royals have proved to be slow learners themselves. 

My thanks to baseball-reference.com and texasleaguers.com for their stats and pitch data.

Who's Closing in KC

Hot on the heels of the news that the Kansas City Royals have lost catcher Salvador Perez for three months, the Royals and their ever hopeful fans were battered by more bad news.  Stalwart closer Joakim Soria hurt his elbow and is apparently is heading toward his second Tommy John surgery.  Soria is owed $6 million this year and the Royals hold an $8 million option for 2013.  It is almost certain the Royals won’t take that option and we as fans must gird ourselves to the possibility that Soria has thrown his last pitch as a Royal.

From 2007-2010, Joakim Soria was as good a closer as baseball had to offer.  He accumulated 132 saves in those four seasons against only 13 blown saves for some pretty awful teams.  He had 281 strikeouts to only 70 walks, a 4:1 ratio.  He was dependable and terrific and fun to watch.  According to Jeff Zimmerman at royalsreview.com, Soria threw his devastating curveball approximately 14% of the time in 2007-2009, but only 7% of the time over the past two years.  The curve ball was his strikeout pitch and if he was unable to throw it, that would explain much of his troubles last season.  Zimmerman postulates this very theme in his article.  Early last season, Soria struggled mightily through May, and it really was the first extended period of ineffectiveness we had seen from him in his Royals career.  Even though he bounced back and regained some of his swagger, he never really looked the same.  He wasn’t putting hitters away as easily has he had in the past.  As fans, we speculated all season as to whether or not something was wrong.  Soria, right up until after his appearance this last Sunday in Arizona, claimed nothing was wrong with his arm.  It is hard to accept that but we have no other choice, do we?

Many people wanted the Royals to trade Soria before the 2011 season.  I was never a proponent of this tactic but I understood the argument.  People who counseled in favor of trade asked what good was it to have a premium closer on a terrible team.  My thought was always that Soria was very popular with the fans and it is hard to measure the value in that.  People would actually go to the ball park in hope of seeing that knee buckling curve.  They would buy #48 jerseys; they would cheer throatily.  Plus, there was never any guarantee that the Royals could get fair value in return.  Yes, he was at the peak of his value that off season but for me, I can’t look back now and blame the Royals for not moving him. 

So, where do the Royals go from here?  If Kansas City has one area of quality depth ready for big league action, it is the bullpen.  My best guess is that Greg Holland will get the first shot at the closer’s role.  Holland was brilliant last season, maintaining 1.80 ERA and .9333 WHIP.  He struck out over 11 per 9 innings and only walked 19 in 60 innings.  He was confident and consistent all season.  If Holland would falter or struggle in April and May, the Royals have Jonathan Broxton, who from 2006-2009 was one of the most dominating closer in the game.  Injuries have derailed his career over the past couple of seasons but Kansas City took a chance he can regain his form.  So far this spring, he has pitch 3 innings with an ERA 3.00.  The Royals are taking it slow with him, allowing him some time to knock off some rust.  What is encouraging sign is that his velocity on his fastball is in the mid 90’s and he feels fine up to this point.  Regardless of who sets up and who closes, Holland and a healthy Broxton could be a dominating combo at the end of ball games. 

Soria’s injury could also open up a spot on the roster for the diminutive but effective The 5’10”, 190 lb. (on a good day) Kelvin Herrera has thrown 7 innings this spring with a 1.29 ERA and 10 strikeouts.  Herrera could slide into that 7^th inning spot Ned Yost likes to use.  If not Herrera, I think Aaron Crow stays in the bullpen and gains an even more important role than he had 2011. 

The Royals can actually afford to take this hit to the backend of their bullpen.  There have been many years when they could not.  Greg Holland or a healthy Jonathan Broxton will mostly likely be more effective than an unhealthy Joakim Soria anyway.  As a fan of the Royals, and of Soria, I am sad to see Joakim go down.  On the financial side of things, the Royals can plan ahead and use the $8 million they would have paid Soria in 2013 to sign Alex Gordon or Eric Hosmer.  Even if (when), the Royals opt out of that 2013 contract year, maybe Soria can come back healthy next season and maybe he will resign with the Royals at a discount.  Who knows?  I just know I am going to miss Soria in the powder blue.

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