The closed window in Kansas City

The Kansas City Royals won the World Series in 1985. They (or more precisely, their fans) then endured almost 30 years without a playoff appearance until 2014, when they lost the World Series in seven games. They they won the Series in 2015.

We're still more than a week from the spot in the calendar when I allow myself to pay attention to the standings, but the 2017 Royals are in last place. What's more, they deserve to be.

The Twins' Byron Buxton has hit fairly well in May, but his overall numbers on the season are still awful: he has an OPS of .538. The Royals lineup Friday night had four players with worse OPSes than that.

To be fair, two of them (Jorge Soler and Cheslor Cuthbert -- and isn't that a name out of a P.J. Wodehouse farce?) have have just over 100 plate appearances between them. But Alex Gordon (.489) and Alcides Escobar (.438) are foundation players for the Royals. And for that matter, Soler's lack of playing time is because of injury. Only Cuthbert was supposed to be a bench guy.

The Royals bullpen has gone in two years from a marked strength to a weakness, certainly, and that's been remarked upon before. But the hitting, never all that strong even when things were going well, is just as big a problem.

It got ugly again in a hurry in K.C.

Pic of the Week

The scene outside Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, where
Wednesday's World Series parade ended.

I guess the fans in Kansas City were a little excited about the Royals' World Series win. The city of Kansas City, Missouri, says 800,000 people came to the victory parade last week. That's more people than live in the city.

The Kansas City Star had this piece about the logistics and expense of the celebration.

(This concludes the Pic of the Week Sunday feature for another season. Next Sunday will begin the offseason Sunday Funnies.)

The Royals are champions

That's former Twins catcher Drew Butera
celebrating the last out of the World Series.
He caught the last inning after Salvador Perez
was pulled for a pinch running during the
Royals' five-run 12th inning.

And so the season ends, with a truly deserving World Series champion. Kansas City had the best record in the American League, and they played like it for three rounds of playoffs.

It wasn't a bad series for a five-gamer. Two of the games went multiple extra innings, and the Mets had late leads in three of their four losses. Poor Jeurys Familia wound up charged with three blown saves, although in two of them he inherited the jam and he didn't allow a baserunner in Sunday's blown save.

I spent most of the Series listening to either the Mets or Royals radio feeds via the MLB At Bat app. It didn't synch up with the TV broadcast all that well, but I also didn't have to listen to Harold Reynolds. Anyway, there was an ad running frequently on the KC feed that said This is the greatest time to be a Royals fan.

Maybe. The George Brett era was pretty darn good. Brett, plus Amos Otis, Hal McRae, Frank White, Dan Quisenberry, Willie Wilson ... They dominated the old AL West for a full decade and went to two World Series, winning one. It wouldn't have taken a lot for them to have gotten to more Series; they just fell short in the playoffs a number of times.

These Royals have done something the Brett-era Royals didn't: They've gone to two Series in a row. How much staying power this model has remains to be seen. Alex Gordon, who I believe is their best player even if Ned Yost hits him eighth, will be a free agent this winter, and some other key components will start approaching that status in the next few years. Keeping the band together is not going to be easy.

But that's for the future. The players and their fans can celebrate now. And they will.

A meaningless World Series prediction

The World Series gets started today, at long last.

It's an interesting matchup.

The Royals had the best record (95-67) in a very even American League; they have an outstanding defense, a superlative bullpen even with Greg Holland injured, and a lineup well made for its power-suppressing home grounds. Their flaws: The rotation is below average and they don't hit many homers -- and their best power hitter, designated hitter Kendrys Morales, will probably be out of the lineup in the games at New York.

The Mets' (90-72) strengths: A rotation stacked with power arms. Their lineup, which was awful in the first half, improved sharply in the second half, largely because the on-base percentages increased.They have more power than the Royals, with seven hitters in double-digits for homers. Their flaws: their middle infield is shaky defensively and they're not particularly fast.

I appreciate the point Pedro Martinez made on TBS at the end of the NL series: The Mets have beaten better starting pitchers this month than the Royals have to offer. They've beaten Clayton Kershaw, Zach Greinke, Jon Lester and Jake Arrieta. But I'm still taking the Royals. Three points:

• The Royals feast on fastballs. They hit .284 this year when swinging at fastballs 95 mph or higher. The Cubs were trying to jack everything into the seats against the Mets velocity; the Royals will take their singles and doubles.
• A lot of the Mets offense this month came off the bat of Daniel Murphy. He's not that good, and this will not continue.
• The Mets power will be negated in Kaufmann Stadium.

Royals in six.

Back to Kansas City

The NLCS is over; the Mets dominated that series, never trailing for even an out. I predicted here that the Mets would win; I certainly didn't expect it to come that easily.

That leaves us with perhaps two games, beginning today, between the Blue Jays and Kansas City to determine which team gets to try to derail the Mets sudden juggernaut. The Jays need two wins, the Royals just one; the Jays have, presumably, their two best starters lined up in David Price and Marcus Stroman. The Royals have their two best arms, Yolando Ventura and Johnny Cueto, as well; I'll take the Toronto duo. (Each duo, let it be noted, consists of a hired gun headed to free agency and a homegrown hurler.)

But even though I think Toronto has the advantage of the pitching matchups, the home field reality remains. They are a team of right-handed sluggers, even more so now than in the regular season with Chris Colabello having pushed Justin Smoak aside at first base. The Kansas City stadium is not a place where sluggers thrive.

Pitching, defense and three-run homers -- the Earl Weaver formula -- is usually a formidable combination. But when the three-run homer isn't something you can rely on, the formula breaks down. Which is why I return to what I said before the series began: I am rooting for the Jays, and I think the Royals will win.

Notes, quotes and comment

Johnny Cueto has a career record of 92-63, 3.21, all
with Cincinnati.

The Twins enter today 7.5 games behind Kansas City in the AL Central. That's not an impossibly steep hill, but it's not an easy one either.

It got a bit steeper on Sunday. The Royals shored up their troublesome rotation by trading for Johnny Cueto, a free agent to be who last year led the National League in innings and strikeouts and this season sports a 2.62 ERA.

It wasn't cheap. K.C. gave up three young lefties: Brandon Finnegan, John Lamb and Cody Reed. Finnegan is the one you're most likely to have heard of; a first-round pick in June 2014, he pitched out of the bullpen for the Royals in September and October during their run to the World Series. He's split this season between Double A, Triple A and the majors and between starting in the minors and relieving in the bigs. The Reds will focus Finnegan on starting, which is probably the best thing for his career.

The Reds were unlikely to re-sign Cueto this offseason, so it makes sense for them to move him for three good pitching prospects (and left-handed ones at that). The Royals are in win-now mode, so sacrificing the young talent makes at least some sense for them.(I suspect that at least one of those three will eventually make KC fans cringe at the thought of this trade, however.) And it's even good for Cueto, who as a mid-season tradee can't be burdened with draft-pick compensation, (He was probably going to have a robust market anyway.)

---

An interesting thing happened in Saturday's Twins loss to the Yankees that got lost in the furor and angst over Alex Rodriguez's three homers and Glen Perkins' blown save.

Trevor May was handed the eighth inning with a one-run lead, and he held that lead.

The Twins have shuffled eighth-inning duties all season. Casey Fien, Blaine Boyer, Aaron Thompson, Brian Duensing. All have been found wanting.

Now, it appears, it's May's turn to try it. I still expect the Twins to do something, either before the nonwaiver trade deadline or in early August through waivers, to shore up the bullpen. But May may be the fallback option.

---

The Twins this weekend added Michael Bowden to their Rochester pitching staff. The 2005 first-rounder has 103 games on his major league resume, mostly with Boston and none of them since 2012, but he's been having a fine season for Baltimore's Triple A team. He exercised his "out" clause when it became apparent that the Orioles weren't going to bring him up and signed with the Twins.

For now he joins Jose Berrios, Tyler Duffey, Taylor Rodgers and Pat Dean in the Rochester rotation, but he has another out clause he can exercise in about a month. He's more likely a bullpen candidate for the major league club than a starting candidate, in my estimation, and there's a decent chance the Twins never bring him up at all.

A Royal October

Kelvin Herrera is part of a powerful Kansas City bullpen
that arguably makes the Royals a better postseason team
than regular season team.

Eight games in the postseason for the Kansas City Royals. Eight wins, no losses and a trip to the World Series.

Not bad at all for an 89-win wild card team.

Nobody who enjoyed the Twins World Series title in 1987 as much as I did has any right to sneer at a sub 90-win team going to the Series. But I knew then that the Twins weren't really the best team in baseball, much less in the American League. They happened to get into the postseason and get the wins they needed to get.

Similarly, these Royals are not the best team in the Central Division, much less the best team in the American League, Their record says so. But they are unbeaten in the three rounds -- wild card game, divisional series, league championship series -- they've played.

This run is likely to be overthought and overanalyzed in coming days, and in truth this post might be a good example of that. But in my view, this Royals rampage emphasizes the difference between regular season baseball and post season baseball.

The regular season is, broadly speaking, a game a day. Six or seven games a week, more or less, for six months. This ain't football. We do this every day, Earl Weaver said years ago, and it remains true -- during the regular season.

The postseason is another case altogether. October baseball is not an everyday affair. The Royals have yet to play on three consecutive days this month. The regulars don't need, or get, the days off they do in August, so a pinch-running specialist can be carried. The pitching depth -- the fourth and fifth starters -- is less important. A six-man staff can carry you through October, but that approach won't work in the regular season.

The Royals have an eight-game winning streak going -- and they have done that without getting six innings from any starting pitcher.It been five innings or so, and here come the relief pitchers.

Here, the Royals are without peer. They have Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland -- three robust right-handed power arms with ERAs this year of 1.41, 1.00 and 1.41 respectively, with a combined 258 strikeouts in 204.1 innings.

If you're not ahead of this team after six innings with this bullpen rested, you're sunk -- and with all the days off built into the October schedule, this bullpen is always rested.

There's more to this surge than just the bullpen, of course. They are the best defensive team in the league, if not the game. And they are finding ways to score enough runs to get to the bullpen, including the long ball, something that eluded them most of the season.

Gardenhire's Twins had two seasons with similarly deep and powerful bullpens -- 2004, with Joe Nathan, Juan Rincon, the briefly healthy Grant Balfour and the rookie Jesse Crain; and 2006, with Nathan, Rincon, Crain, Pat Neshek and Dennys Reyes.

But in 2004 Gardenhire didn't trust Crain enough to use him in game situations in the playoffs, and Rincon gave up a crucial homer to Ruben Sierra. And in 2006 the starters and lineup never got the lead to the bullpen.

That hasn't been an issue for the Royals.

Pic of the Week

Kansas City catcher Salvador Perez (13) stands atop
the dugout fence to celebrate Eric Hosmer's two-run
homer in the 11th inning Saturday night.

Three postseason games for the Kansas City Royals so far. Three extra-inning games. Three wins for K.C.

The Royals, the one team in baseball that couldn't hit 100 homers this year, has won two in a row on extra-inning four-baggers.

And if they win today, they will have swept the team with the best record in the American League.

About last night

Ned Yost prepares to ignore the
conventional wisdom Tuesday.

That was a whale of a ball game Tuesday night, a 12-inning brawl between Oakland and Kansas City.

So much ball game. Too bad the TBS crew really wasn't up to the task, prattling nonsense about "Big James James" Shields (postseason ERA entering the contest above 5 runs a game) and blaming Brandon Moss's second-half struggles on the trade of Yoenis Cepedes rather than on a hip injury that needs surgery. Think Ron Darling would like to edit out his seventh inning claim that Jon Lester is "like a machine" pretty much just before the implosion began?

Ned Yost found a way to one-run tactic his way back against a four-run deficit. It is, in the long run, self-destructive to try that. On Tuesday, it worked.

Which, as a Twins fan, pleases me. Having a division rival get positive reinforcement for silly strategies will only encourage them to continue the silliness.

I embrace the bunt more than most internet baseball opinionmongers, but I would not object if, in the process of evaluating managerial candidates, the Twins ran Tuesday's scenarios by the candidates and rejected those who would do that which Yost did.

Yost's Royals are, in a sense, a throwback to the baseball I embraced as a young adult, built on speed and defense. Lacking from this team is the artificial turf component of Whitey Herzog's outstanding Kansas City and St. Louis teams. Lacking from those teams, but present in this one (and on the 1985 Royals team that won the World Series two managers removed from Herzog): Power arms in the starting rotation.

Which brings me to the Yost move that I most object to: His decision in the sixth inning to bring Yordano Ventura into the game with two on, no outs.

Ventura is both young and high-velocity. He started on Sunday and threw 73 pitches. Tuesday was his bullpen day, but he had never actually pitched on his bullpen day.

Yost has plenty of gas throwers in his bullpen who are used to coming in with men on base. Ventura is not. But Yost went with the tired young starter, who promptly got shelled.

Pitching Ventura in that specific situation was the wrong move both for winning the game AND for the future of the team and the player. Yost got away with it. But it was wrong anyway.

Tigers and Royals

Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez
celebrate as the Kansas City Royals
secured their first postseason berth
since winning the World Series in 1985.

They are, going into the final two days of the schedule, separated by just one game. But as close as they are in the standings, the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals are very different teams, with almost mirror image strengths and weaknesses.

The Tigers have a brawny lineup. They stand second in the American League in runs scored and are closer to first than to third in that important stat. They're first in doubles (you'll never guess which team is second*), first in batting average, first in slugging percentage, first in on-base percentage,

Their starting rotation boasts the last three American League Cy Young Award winners, and they also have last year's ERA champ, who isn't one of the Cys.

But their bullpen -- despite the addition of numerous "proven closers" -- remains a minefield, and they are -- despite their drastic offseason infield makeover -- a dismal defensive team. The Tigers shed Prince Fielder so they could move Miguel Cabrera to first base and insert Nick Castellanos at third, and this was expected to improve the defense. Um ... not so much:

Stat of the Day: Nick Castellanos (-30 Runs Saved) is approaching Ryan Braun's record (-32, 2007) for the worst 3B season of the DRS era.
— John Dewan (@FieldingBible) September 23, 2014

(Last night Castellanos committed a throwing error that allowed the Twins two runs.)

The Royals, on the other hand, are ninth in the AL in runs scored, more than 100 fewer than the Tigers. They are the one AL team with fewer than 100 homers. They are dead last in walks drawn.

Their starting pitching is competent, but certainly James Shields, Danny Duffy, Yolando Ventura and Jason Vargas don't have the cachet of Max Scherzer, David Price and Justin Verlander.

What makes the Royals -- at least in the standings -- the virtual equivalent of the Tigers is their prowess afield and the smothering capacity of their bullpen. Kansas City has a collection of fleet outfielders and skilled infielders, with legit Gold Glove candidates at four or five positions. (Torii Hunter owns more Gold Gloves than the entire Royals roster put together, but he now covers about as much ground as those ugly trophies.)

To be sure, the Pythagorean Theorem doesn't see the two teams as near equals. By the simple formula of runs scored vs. runs allowed, Detroit "should" be four games better than Kansas City. By wins and losses, they're only one game better after 160 contests.

I've been neutral between the two teams. But the novelty of Kansas City in the playoffs is intriguing, and -- well, the Royals aren't winning the division title without help from the Twins this weekend. So let's go Royals.

*OK, I was wrong, and you did guess that the Twins are second.

Contemplating Liam Hendriks

Liam Hendriks threw first-pitch strikes to 20 of the 25
hitters he faced Wednesday night.

Liam Hendriks made 28 starts for the Twins over a three-year stretch before they cut him loose last winter (to make room on the roster for free-agent signee Phil Hughes). None of those starts were as good as his outting Wednesday night for the Royals against the Twins. He took a perfect game into the fifth inning and he didn't allow a run until the seventh.

Hendriks didn't get the win, but he was very effective.

This gave my (rather Twins-oriented) Twitter feed a theme for the night: How can Liam Freaking Hendriks be shutting out the Twins?

Well, there are a number of reasons. Hendriks (and Hughes) benefited from a generous outside corner, for one thing.

But another factor in why Hendriks appeared so much better in his Kansas City debut than he ever did with the Twins: The Royals put a high-quality defense in the field behind him. The Twins seldom did.

For example: Hendriks' final start for the Twins came on Sept. 16, 2013. He didn't make it out of the first inning: two outs, seven runs allowed.

The Twins outfield for that game: Alex Presley in center, flanked by Oswaldo Arcia in left and Chris Herrmann in right. The infield: Chris Parmelee at first, Eduardo Escobar at second, Trevor Plouffe at third, Pedro Florimon at short. Josmil Pinto caught.

The defense Kansas City put behind Hendriks Wednesday night was, in my estimation, markedly better at every position except first base and maybe second base. I'm not saying Hendriks was good that night against the White Sox; I will say that defense, and particularly the outfielders, wasn't going to do him any favors -- certainly not of the kind that Alex Gordon did with a catch off Kurt Suzuki.

I don't know that Hendriks is going to be an effective major league starter. I do know that his minor league numbers are very good, and I have long believed that the Twins handled him far too impatiently, particularly in 2012.

It's taken four years of sporadic starts, but the Rule of 30 finally applies to Hendriks; Wednesday was his 32nd big-league start. The Rule of 30 says you give a pitcher 30 starts before you decide if he can succeed in the majors. Right or wrong, the Twins were never willing to go more than a month with him in the rotation.

Around the Division: Kansas City Royals

Eric Hosmer, now 24, came on strong
last season during George Brett's
brief tenure as hitting coach.

Kansas City, long the weakest outfit in the generally weak American League Central, rose up to an 86-76 mark in 2013. They'd been down so long that that record felt, said general manager Dayton Moore, like winning the World Series.

Such irrational exuberance soon wears off. And the Royals — who last made the playoffs in 1985, a season in which they did indeed win the World Series — are going for it hard in 2014.

K.C. had a very young lineup last season. The oldest regular listed on their Baseball Reference page was 29. They did have the 39-year-old Miguel Tejada holding down second base for a few weeks until he got nailed for PED use, but the lineup was basically the fruits of what was regarded a few years ago as the most loaded farm system ever.

Which is not to say it was a good lineup, at least at the plate. The Royals were 11th in the AL in runs scored. It was a very good defensive team, but offense was an issue.

The Royals have acted on those problems. They traded a spare arm (lefty Will Smith) to Milwaukee for right fielder Norichika Aoki, who has a rare profile for a Royal: He doesn't strike out, and he draws walks. Aoki fits the defensive skill mode of the team, and he gives them a legitimate leadoff man.

And they plugged the second base hole by outbidding the New York Yankees (!) for Tigers refugee Omar Infante. Infante hit .315 for Detroit last season, working in the bottom of the lineup; the Royals appear likely to put Aoki and Infante at the top, to set the table for Eric Hosmer, Billy Butler and Alex Gordon.

I'd put Gordon second rather than fifth, but the fact remains: The Royals have improved the offense without damaging the defense.

I'm not as high on their pitching outlook. The 2013 rotation put a lot of work on three arms. James Shields led the AL in innings, Jeremy Guthrie was 10th, and Ervin Santana was less than an inning behind Guthrie. Shields is still around (last year of his contract, which is part of why the Royals figure to be all-in for 2014). Guthrie, 35 in April, is coming off arguably his career year; while he's been markedly better in Kansas City than he has been elsewhere, it's easier to see him falling off than repeating or improving.

And Santana is a free agent, with the Royals appearing content to let him go elsewhere and pocket the draft pick compensation. Junkballing lefty Bruce Chen, who wormed his way into 15 starts (and a 3.27 ERA) is also a free agent. Between the two of them, K.C. is losing 332 innings of 3.25 ball. That won't be easily replaced.

They signed journeyman lefty Jason Vargas to a four-year deal; he's unlikely to match Santana's 2013 in either workload or effectiveness.

Kansas City is really counting on Danny Duffy, who returned from Tommy John surgery to make five starts in August and September with a 1.85 ERA. He wasn't really as good as the ERA suggests, but he is talented. More than Vargas, he's the one the Royals need to have fill Santana's role in the rotation. I'm not sure he's durable enough.

AL Central: Going all festival

The Twins weren't the only major league team holding a promotional "fest" last weekend -- with the offweek in the NFL playoffs, it was a good opportunity to get some headlines and remind fans that spring training is just a couple of weeks away.

Around the division's fan fests:

Detroit: Perhaps the biggest question for the Tigers is: Who closes? Jim Leyland, the manager, had an amusing answer and a more sincere one, and the sincere one can be found in the link: Prospect Bruce Rondon is the leading candidate, but Leyland wants to get a sense of his makeup before committing to the kid in the ninth inning.

But I liked this one, from the first day of Tigerfest: This is why I like these forums, so I can think about these things. I don't know what I'm going to do.

Chicago: The ghost of A.J. Pierzynski, who signed with Texas as a free agent, apparently haunted Soxfest. That's understandable: Pierzynski has been a durable, productive catcher who fit well with the South Siders self-image, and nobody really knows what to expect of Tyler Flowers, the heir apparent.

I understand why the Sox let A.J. go. He's in his mid-30s, and he has a lot of mileage on his tires. Catchers typically don't last as long as he has. But I expect the Sox will miss him a great deal. 

Kansas City: Actually held its fanfest the previous week. The Royals, who've been compiling a lineup of talented young position players, were rather aggressive about getting starting pitchers -- Jamie Shields, Jeremy Guthrie, Edwin Santana, Wade Davis -- and the organization obviously wants to make its move up the standings now.

I have the sense that the K.C. fan base isn't fully buying it.

Cleveland: Also held its Tribefest the previous week. Hey: Terry Francona! Nick Swisher! A couple of new names the casual fan knows! 

The offseason move that matters most was probably trading for pitching prospect Trevor Bauer, but that's not the kind of guy who packs the autograph lines.

Around the division: Kansas City Royals

James Shields has
exceeded 200 innings
in each of the past
six seasons.

Back in September, I published this post suggesting that the Twins could trade Chris Parmelee for James Shields. A few days later I said: No, Shields is going to cost a lot more than that.

The reconsidered view proved more correct: The Kansas City Royals on Sunday traded four top prospects for Shields, Wade Davis and a player to be named. They also acquired a great deal of social media mockery.

They earned every bit of that mockery.

It isn't that Shields and Davis are bad pitchers, by any means. It's that this was a horrendous overpay on the part of Kansas City. Wil Myers is one of the very best prospects in the minor leagues, fully ready to step into the middle of a major league lineup. Jake Odorizzi is a nearly-ready starter. Mike Montgomery's luster has faded after a pair of disappointing seasons in the upper minors, but he remains too talented to count out. Patrick Leonard is further away, but talented.

This was a deal of desperation on the part of the Royals front office. Dayton Moore has been in charge for seven years, and the Royals, despite building an impressive stack of prospects, have not reached .500, much less reached the playoffs, under his regime. The basic problem: The young starting pitchers have failed to develop, and the Kansas City rotation last year was as much a mess as Minnesota's.

Wil Myers was Baseball
America's minor league
player of the year in 2012.

And so Moore, who is widely perceived to be running out of time, has spent the offseason scraping up immediate rotation help. He claimed Edwin Santana on waivers, signed Jeremy Guthrie to a three-year contract and gave Tampa Bay the heart of his farm system for Shields and Davis. (Davis had started for the Rays in previous seasons but spent 2012 in the bullpen, where he was much better; it's unclear what the Royals have in mind with him.)

This improves the Royals; they figure now to be a .500 team, maybe a little better, perhaps a wild-card contender. I don't think that two years of James Shields justifies giving up Myers' career. I don't think Davis justifies giving up Odorizzi's career. And that's not counting the Montgomery and Leonard lottery tickets.

Moore may have figured he needs to achieve at least .500 in 2013 much to keep his job. Or, to be charitable, he may have a different sense of how close his team is to a true breakthrough. If he really thinks his team is now a World Series contender, he's pretty close to unique. This looks like a desperate move by a desperate GM, and desperation is seldom productive.

As a Twins fan, this trade pleases me. Terry Ryan is assembling a crop of prospects -- Miguel Sano, Byron Buxton, Alex Meyer, Oswaldo Arcia, Aaron Hicks, J.O. Berrios and others -- worthy of comparison to the Royals farm system of a few years ago; this trade may well mean that when Ryan's prospects are ready in a couple of years, the Royals won't be an obstacle. At least, they won't be as formidable an obstacle as they could have been.

Revisiting the Tigers and Royals

Miguel Cabrera was bleeding profusely after
behind hit by a ground ball. It apparently looks
worse than it actually was.

On the past three Saturdays I've reviewed the offseasons and outlook for three divisional rivals of the Twins. (The fourth will publish this coming Saturday.)

Already two of those, the Royals and Tigers, need to be revisited.

One of the more intriguing moves of the offseason was Detroit's decision to move Miguel Cabrera to third base to make room at first for Prince Fielder. On Monday Cabrera took a bad hop off the face; on Tuesday the Tigers said he had a non-displaced fracture of the orbital bone under his right eye. They say his vision is fine, and he'll be rechecked in a week after the swelling has gone down.

We can assume that the Tigers and Cabrera figured they'd lose some runs on defense by playing him there. They probably didn't figure that he was going to be exposed to injury.

The chatter at Tigers camp Tuesday was that the sunglasses he was wearing at the time were responsible for the bloody cut but probably protected his eye from the ball; Detroit GM David Dombrowski said the ball's laces left an imprint on the lens.

For what it's worth, Jim Leyland says nobody was going to handle that hop and that Cabrera's drawbacks at the position had nothing to do with the mishap. He may be right. But it will be interesting to see if Cabrera flinches on hard-hit balls whenever he gets back on the field, which probably won't come much before Opening Day at the earliest.

Kansas City's closer, Joakim Soria, has ligament damage in his right elbow and may require Tommy John surgery. It would be Soria's second such operation. Among the fallout: Aaron Crow is to remain in the bullpen, although he doesn't figure to take Soria's closing role.

The Royals have also lost catcher Salvador Perez to knee surgery for about the first two months.

Around the AL Central: Kansas City Royals

Man, this is going to be one tough team to pitch to. Maybe not to so much this year, but down the road, as these kids get more major league experience and a better understanding of how pitchers are working them ... The Royals now have lot of hitting talent, with some more percolating up through the system.

Things are looking up for the Royals,
including Lorenzo Cain (foreground)
and Wil Myers.

A logical lineup for Ned Yost:

Lorenzo Cain, CF
Johnny Giovotella, 2B
Alex Gordon, LF
Eric Hosmer, 1B
Billy Butler, DH
Mike Moustakas, 3B
Jeff Francoeur, RF
Salvador Perez, C
Alcides Escobar, SS

You may not be real familiar with a lot of those names, but you will be. A lot of high draft picks there -- the fruit of almost 25 straight seasons of sub-.500 ball finally paying off. Hosmer didn't win the AL Rookie of the Year award last year (Tampa Bay's Jeremy Hellickson did), but he wouldn't have been a bad choice at all. Moustakas' rookie numbers don't look good in total, but he erupted in the final month. Perez so impressed the Royals that they signed him to what may be an eight-year deal.

This team will hit. It's skewed a bit to the left side, but it will hit.

Pitch, not so much. The Royals have run into the injury bugaboo with some of their starting pitching prospects, some of whom are nearly as highly touted as their young hitters. As long as Luke Hochaver is their No. 1 starter, it's going to be tough for the Royals to contend.

The bullpen was pretty good last season, and there are Twins fans who are envious of K.C.'s acquistion of former Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton this offseason. Broxton hasn't been effective for some time, however, and I suspect his chief value is as a security blanket that allows the Royals to move Aaron Crow, who made the All-Star team as a rookie middle reliever, to the rotation.

If Crow takes to starting (his minor league record is pretty dismal), and if the 30-start rule applies to Danny Duffy, and if Jonathan Sanchez somehow discovers the strike zone in the American League ... well, then Hochaver and Bruce Chen slide down from being their top two starters to being their fourth and fifth arms, and in that case the Royals might even win this divisional title

But that's asking for a lot of things to go right. Even if they don't, I fully expect the Royals to take a big step forward in 2012. They're primed to be "phony contenders" the way Cleveland was last season.

The cost of a strikeout arm

Jonathan Sanchez was the third starter for the Giants when
they won the World Series in 2010, but was their fifth
best starter in 2011 (4-7, 4.26).

We interrupt our musings on the Twins front office shakeup to comment on a trade made Monday: The Kansas City Royals sent outfielder Melky Cabrera to San Francisco for starter Jonathan Sanchez and minor league lefty Ryan Verdugo.

This is of interest to Twins fans not only because the Royals are in their division, but because it suggests what the trade market looks like for starting pitchers, in particular starting pitchers who get strikeouts — which is the kind of starting pitcher the Twins could use more of.

Cabrera had a big year for Kansas City: .305/.339/470 while playing center field. His OPS+ — a stat that adjusts on base-plus-slugging for home field bias — was equal to Michael Cuddyer's. This was easily Cabrera's best season, and he's not particularly likely to replicate it, but his value was probably at its peak.

And what the Royals got for him is a power arm who led the league in walks in 2010, who made just 19 starts because of injury in 2011, who walked almost six men per nine inning when he did pitch, and who is eligible for free agency after 2012.

Yikes.

There basically two outcomes for Kansas City from this trade:

• Sanchez continues to be wild and/or hurt, in which case the Royals will let somebody else try to harness his talent in 2013;
• Sanchez finds sufficient command and health to be effective, in which case he's likely to be overpriced for Kansas City.

There's not much long-term upside for the Royals in this exchange, and yet he was worth giving up one of their better hitters.

Around the division: Chicago White Sox

While the first-place Twins were playing the disappointing but still dangerous Angels this weekend, the second-place White Sox had a three-game set in Kansas City.

In theory, this was a chance for the Sox to make up some ground. Instead, they slid a game further back — and did it in excruciating fashion, as all three games went extra innings, with a backdrop of bad blood toward one of the umpires and frustration with the TV rules.

The saga begins with Friday night, when the game began despite the expectation of drenching rain. The rain came, and stayed, and washed out what little had been accomplished.

The crew chief, and hence the man responsible for calling the game, was Joe West. The Sox had a run-in with West in May, and in the wake of Friday's rainout weren't happy with the decision to start the game to begin with.

But:

• Generally speaking, it's not the umpires' decision until the game starts. Up to then, it's usually the home team's call. (There are exceptions, and maybe this was one.)
• If Ozzie Guillen expected heavy rain, he didn't have to start Edwin Jackson. He could have deployed one of his middle relievers.
• Jackson threw just seven pitches before the game was called. Seven! Sure, he warmed up beforehand but still ... this is a guy who threw 147 pitches earlier this season to get a no-hitter, and now he's burned for five days by a seven-pitch outing?

My take: Ozzie messed this one up.

Saturday: Because Fox has an exclusive TV window on Saturday, the rain-out was rescheduled as a nighttime double-header. First game started after 6 p.m. It went extra innings, with the Royals winning. The second game went extra innings, with the Sox winning (and Tony Pena, normally a middle reliever, going seven innings for Ozzie).

Sunday: A 1 p.m. start, meaning three games in 22 hours — and extra innings again, meaning 31 innings in those 22 hours. Royals win.

All kinds of deliciousness for me in this mess of a series.

• Both Rany Jazayerli and Joe Posnanski put up blog posts in praise of Yuniesky Betancourt. OK, lukewarm praise.
• Hawk Harrelson spent Sunday — pretty much all game, apparently — ripping West on the air.
• Ozzie Guillen issued a profane rant. Shocking, I know.

Oh, one more thing about the Sox: Ace lefty reliever Matt Thornton hasn't thrown a pitch since Jim Thome's homer last week and may be headed to the disabled list.

Around the division

Even after last night's whupping at the hands of the lowly Mariners. the Twins still have the largest lead of any division leader.

And that's hardly unnoticed elsewhere in the AL Central. The blogs I keep an eye on have essentially conceded that it will take some sort of disaster for the Twins to lose the division title, or even for there to be a serious race in September.

The Chicago White Sox are the subject of multiple trade rumors, particularly surrounding A.J. Pierzynski, who (a) is in the last year of his contract; (b) gains automatic no-trade status on June 14, when he becomes a 10-and-5 players (10 years of service time, five year with his current team; and (c) as a well-used 33-year-old catcher may be at the point where his current .217 batting average is not a mere slump.

The Detroit Tigers, to the surprise of almost everybody, found a market for Dontrelle Willis. They shipped the troubled former all-star to Arizona for pitching quasi-prospect Billy Buckner, who at 26 and with more than 130 major league innings isn't much of a prospect anymore. But the Tigers got something for Willis, and Buckner strikes me as a reasonable replacement (eventually) for Zach Miner, who is out with ligament replacment surgery.

The Tigers have installed Carlos Guillen (above) as their regular second baseman — or, perhaps more accurately, he'll play second until he gets hurt again. He had played second in a dozen major league games before this — all of them in the previous century.

I would assume they're not expecting quality glovework from him. This is about getting another bat in the lineup.

The Cleveland Indians are seeing their season roil down the toilet. Grady Sizemore needs surgery for a bone bruise in his knee, and there's talk of more surgery ahead for their roster centerpiece.

Meanwhile, there's this: They drew 1.7 million last year; factoring in the economy, they budgeted for an attendance of 1.5 million; they're on pace to draw 1.1 million.

The Kansas City Royals aren't just a bad team, they're an uninteresting bad team. But Rany Jazayerli sees hope in a burgeoning farm system.

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.