Pic of the Week

Alex Gordon reaches for the ball on Jason Castro's
ninth-inning single Thursday. The play not made proved
critical in the Twins' three-run rally to win the game.

One percent.

That, according to Statcast, is how often Jason Castro's blooper to short left field on Thursday turns into a hit.

You have here two players -- left fielder Alex Gordon and shortstop Alcides Escobar -- who have won Gold Gloves at their respective positions. You have a blooper that is caught, literally, 99 percent of the time in the major leagues.

And the Royals couldn't get the out. And that failure allowed the Twins to win the game.

Kansas City will always have the 2016 World Series trophy to embrace, plus the memory of how close the 2015 team was to making it two in a row. The core of that team is almost certainly going to split apart this offseason.

This was one play in one game. But that core, as beloved and accomplished as it is, is in decline.

Pic of the Week

Alex Gordon shatters his bat in the fourth inning
Friday in Baltimore.

This is what a three-run double can look like. I'm going to say Chris Tillman didn't make a bad pitch here. He was just unlucky.

Loading the bases before this swing, that's not all bad luck. There was a lot more to that inning than a broken-bat double.

Mike Trout, Alex Gordon and the MVP race

Alex Gordon (4) is pretty clearly the best player on the
first-place Kansas City Royals. Does that make him
the MVP?

Alex Gordon had himself an impressive series this week against the Twins: A game-winning walk-off homer on Tuesday, a run-into-the-fence catch on Wednesday, a game-tying seventh-inning homer on Thursday.

Production and drama make a potent combination. Narrative, for better or worse, tends to drive MVP voting, and the rise of the Royals provides a first-rate narrative.

This led the great Joe Posnanski to compose a pair of blog posts -- here and here -- on the topic of Gordon's MVP candidacy.

(Posnanski was at those games, and I was home with the TV and/or radio broadcasts, but I have to say: I didn't notice the "M-V-P" chants he cites. But I keep the TV turned down now that Bert Blyleven is back on the broadcasts, and the crowds weren't so large as to force me to take notice.)

Pos makes a variety of great points, among them mentioning in the first post how some in the sabermetric community see the WAR stat being used (in the great Vin Scully line) as a drunk uses a lamppost (for support rather than illumination).

Mike Trout's glovework is not as
highly rated these days as it once was.

But it's the theme of the second post -- that Mike Trout, the best player in baseball the past two years but not recognized by the BBWAA vote as the MVP, is morphing from an incredibly broad talent into something closer to a Miggy Cabrera skill set -- that had me nodding my head in agreement.

Trout is an incredible player -- but he doesn't run as well, or at least as often, as he did two years ago, and the defensive metrics aren't as kind to his fielding. This flies in the face of the nearly omnipresent MLB ad that boasts: Mike Trout can do anything. All you have to do is ask. The anything is fading.

Bill James wrote decades ago that players who do a lot of things well tend to be underappreciated, and those who do one thing very well tend to get more recognition than they should. Trout in 2012 and 2013 did everything very well. Miguel Cabrera did a few things even better, and got the awards.

Trout's skill set is narrowing, and now he might finally win the award. There's an irony in that.

On Trey Hillman

Trey Hillman finally got the ax in Kansas City on Thursday. It was inevitable, especially after the Sunday incident when Josh Hamilton of Texas advanced a base on a fly ball without tagging up and nobody — NOBODY — in a Royals uni noticed.

It was Joe Posnanski's piece about that play — well, that and the Twins weekend series with Baltimore — that prompted my post on the Royals and Orioles. And Pos, in his usual elongated style, gives a very reasonable macro-reason why Hillman failed.

There's no argument: The Royals' problems go beyond Hillman. Replacing him with Ned Yost is not a fix. They may get the baseball equivalent of a dead cat bounce, but the Royals have three to five high-quality players (Zach Grienke, Joakim Soria, Billy Butler, maybe David DeJesus and Gil Meche) surrounded by a bunch of guys who wouldn't make the Twins roster, much less lineup. That might be partly Hillman's fault, but the blame goes more on Dayton Moore, the general manager.

The Royals took Alex Gordon with the second overall pick in 2005, took him ahead of Ryan Braun and Tory Tulowitzki and Ryan Zimmerman and Ricky Romero and Andrew McCutcheon and Matt Garza ... and it wasn't a stupid pick. Most organizations, I dare say, would have taken Gordon there. It just didn't work. Gordon is back in the minors now; they're trying to make him a left fielder.

The Royals took Luke Hochevar with the first overall pick in 2006. This was not a consensus pick, and for a number of reasons I wouldn't have wanted the Twins to draft him had he been on the board when they took Chris Parmelee with the 20th pick, but still: The Royals thought Hochevar was worth the top pick, and it hasn't worked, and probably won't. Hochevar has had almost 60 starts, well past my 30-start "now you can start judging him as a major-league pitcher" rule, and he still has an ERA pushing 6.

(Among those the Royals passed up: Evan Longoria, Tim Lincecum, Clayton Kershaw, Chris Couglan, Joba Chamberlain.)

Neither player has developed under Hillman. They are no better, and perhaps a bit worse, now than when they arrived in Kansas City.

The players taken in those spots in the draft should be cornerstone players. Is the failure of Gordon and Hochevar to meet that standard the fault of the scouts? The minor league system? Hillman? A combination? I can't say for sure how to apportion the blame, but I know this: It's no way to rebuild the once-proud Royals.

More on what ails the Royals

Elaborating on the Monday print column:

I was probably generous to the Royals in suggesting that luck was a factor in their years in the wilderness compared to the Twins.

Management makes its own luck. Was there a Joe Mauer in the 2005 draft? Probably not — but after the Royals took 3B Alex Gordon with the No. 2 overall pick, the Nationals took 3B Ryan Zimmerman (fourth) and the Brewers took 3B Ryan Braun (fifth). Braun, of course, has since moved to left field, but there's a couple of All-Stars K.C. passed up.

Then there's Troy Tulowitzki (seventh overall to Colorado,) Ricky Romero (sixth to Toronto), Andrew McCutcheon (11th, Pittsburgh) ... the Twins took Matt Garza 24th, which is, of course, a whole 'nother story itself.

Eyeballing the first round, I see at least 10 players taken after Gordon who have clearly established themselves as better major league players. (And a number of out-and-out busts as well. C.J. Henry, anybody? Brandon Snyder?)

The Royals made the conventional choice in taking Gordon. The Twins made a slightly unconventional choice in taking Mauer over Mark Prior (and Mark Teixiera) in 2001. But the Twins have done their best work in the upper rounds of the draft when defying the conventional wisdom. The Royals really haven't done any best work in the upper rounds of the draft (other than taking Zack Grienke in 2002).

Further deepening the Royals-Twins comparison: The Mike Jacobs fiasco is worth considering. Last winter, Kansas City had on hand for first base Billy Butler (above), then 22, who appeared hopeless defensively, and Kila Ka'aihue, a 24-year-old who had raked the upper leaves of the minor leagues (a combined OPS of 1.085 in Double A and Triple A.) Two young hitters with defensive shortcomings.

The Royals eyed those options and traded a decent middle relief arm (Leo Nunez) to Florida for Jacobs, an older hitter (now 28) with defensive shortcomings and a $3 million-plus contract.

Butler has taken over first now; he's worked on his fielding — not that he's threatening Carlos Pena or Teixiera for a Gold Glove. Jacobs is a part-time DH with a miserable OBP (.305) and slugging percentage (.422). Nunez is closing for Florida. Ka'aihue? He's in Triple A amassing a .400 OPB.

This, as my brother would say, is dumb with a capital M. If you have Butler and Ka'aihue, you don't need Jacobs. But everybody in baseball can use an arm like Nunez, and everybody can use an extra $3 million in the budget.

Then there's the manager. Joe Posnanski is an unabashed Ron Gardenhire admirer — has written often that Gardy is the best manager in the game — and that admiration is only understandable in the context of the silly decisions he's watched Royals managers make over the years. Here's a Posnanski post on one such.

And as long as I'm linking to blogs complaining about the Royals — consider this piece of bitterness from Rany Jazayerli, although I should warn you that there's a semi-edited obscenity involved.

There's no disgrace in being bad for a few years. Being relentlessly bad for as long as the Royals have ... that's another matter. That the Royals stand here today, with ONE player under 25 on the roster and headed to a sixth 100-loss season in nine years ... well, that may deserve an obscenity to describe it.