The value of stalling a prospect

Wil Myers: Too good for the Rays to have on the roster
for the full season.

Wil Myers is widely regarded as one of the brightest prospects in baseball. Last year, in the Kansas City farm system, he tore through Double A and Triple A to the tune of a combined .314/.387/.600 with 37 home runs.

If there was a credible prospect rankings list this spring that didn't have him in the top four, I missed it. Top-level talent and major league ready.

The Tampa Bay Rays dealt James Shields, a quality starter, to the Royals; Myers was the centerpiece of the return. He fits the offense-starved Rays' needs perfectly — an outfielder with a power bat.

Last weekend, the Rays optioned Myers back to Triple A in an obvious ploy to delay his arbitration eligibility. For a sound detailed dissection of why it makes sense for the Rays to stall his career, click here. To sum it up in a sentence, by this analysis the Rays figure to save some $15 million if they keep him in the minors for half the season.

Few teams are as consistently budget-conscious as Tampa Bay. (Oakland would be an obvious one.) The financial logic behind holding back a young stud is powerful. It also has its drawbacks. In the case of the Rays and Myers, not having him in the major league lineup for half the season could cost the team a couple wins, and that might be enough to cost them a division title.

The logic that has the Rays sacrificing a few games now for the sake of 2019 is why there are Twins followers who suspect/expect that Aaron Hicks will not get to open the season with the big club.

But the situations here are not truly identical.

• Hicks, unlike Myers, hasn't been in Triple A yet. 
• The Twins have deeper revenue streams than do the Rays.
• The risk of Hicks becoming too good for the Twins to afford is lower than the risk of Myers becoming too good for the Rays to afford.
• And even if Hicks does become pricier than the Twins want to pay, the Twins have other, probably superior, outfield talents deeper in the system (Byron Buxton as the most notable example).

Terry Ryan and Co. have been careful to avoid declaring the center field competition over. I continue to believe, however, that Hicks is the most logical winner of the job. And I continue to believe that the financial considerations that will keep Myers out of the majors for a while this year will not block Hicks this April.

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.