Baseball Tonight did a short feature on Chuck Knoblauch. The Royals go to Yankee Stadium for the first (and only) time this season for a three-game series starting on Tuesday. The feature was standard Baseball Tonight fare. Chuck has no regrets, can't explain what happened, has many fond memories, etc. But something occurred to me for the first time since Spring Training: why don't the Royals try to move Knoblauch back to second base?
Paul Byrd was not traded because Allard Baird was holding out for a pivotman capable of starting right away. If the Mets could have been convinced to send pitching prospect Aaron Heilman to Toronto, Byrd would have ended up in New York and Orlando Hudson would be starting for the Royals right now. I suppose that it's not Baird's fault that the deal didn't go through but it is still frusturating. Baird is always slow in recognizing the need to change direction. The most successful team in unloading payroll and loading up on prospects was Cleveland. While Allard Baird was busy adding Knoblauch and Michael Tucker, putting the finishing touches on a roster he believed could contend for the playoffs this year, Tribe GM Mark Shapiro was already looking to 2004, sending Roberto Alomar to the Mets, the first of many moves that reduced payroll and which ultimately brought 19 new prospects into the Cleveland organization. He got super SS prospect Brandon Phillips, OF Alex Escobar, Ben Broussard and much, much more. With the young pitching that is already around, the Indians will be a talented, cost-efficient team in 2004 with a tremendous upside. Meanwhile the Royals are even further away from contending than they were at the end of 2001 because Baird erred yet again in his appraisal of where the Royals were in the winning cycle. I am currently penning an article on the Royals roster construction, their financial situation and have suggested a path to get where the Indians are by 2004. I've put enough work & research into this article that I'm going to attempt to publish it. If I'm successful, I'll post a link here. Even if I don't publish it, I'll put it up on my homepage and link to it here.
A useful trait in a small-market GM is the ability to think 'outside of the box'. (I hate that overused phrase and can't believe I used it. To me it is ironic that a term meant to refer to the unconventional is most often used in a sterile, homogenous corporate environment. Ugh.) Seems to me that Baird is far too conventional for a small-market GM. At the dawn of 2002, I personally had not yet given up on Carlos Febles. He had not yet made it through a season healthy and it is hard to forget the tremendous upside he had when he first arrived at the K. He had great range, a flair for the spectacular, he was a patient hitter with decent power and was a great base stealer. Now, at the age of 26, he is Chico Lind reincarnated. He has been healthy for the most part this season but has not developed. If anything, he has regressed. His range numbers (I warily use Stats' Zone Ratings as evidence of range, it's not perfect but as good as I can find) are in the lower quarter of AL second basemen, he has committed the second most errors at the position and his hitting has been awful. He goes through long stretches when he has trouble even getting the bat on the ball. I fear that all of the injuries have robbed him of his range and retarded his development as a batsmen beyond all hope. So I understand Baird's desire to replace him. And if he could have gotten Orlando Hudson or Marcus Giles, that would have been tremendous. But he didn't.
Back to Knoblauch. Am I the only one that lost track of the fact that standing in left field for the Royals is the man who, according to Win Shares, ranked as the second-best pivotman of the 1990's? Knoblauch's -14 VORP is near the bottom of AL outfielders. His numbers would also put him at the bottom of the pack of second basemen, but for the purpose of this rant, that is beside the point. The point is that if the Royals would have been willing to take the risk and put Knoblauch back at second, it could have been a big upgrade to the position. Also, left field would have been opened up for Dee Brown to continue his development at the Major League level. Brown, thrown for a loop after finding himself back in AAA, got off to a slugglish start but has been mashing the ball consistently for the last two months. But I fear that he has been set back an entire year by this demotion.
At this point, is it too late to mess with moving Knoblauch to second? After all, the season is lost and Knoblauch will be a free agent after the season. Can't imagine any scenario in which he would return, right? Well, how about this: if you move Knoblauch to second right now, then you find out if his throwing demons have been distinguished. Perhaps he even relaxes and begins to hit better. And then, after the season he's had, he might be willing to come back to KC for $1.5 - $2 million on another one-year deal. There may be better options via trade but if those fail, it would make more sense to bring Knoblauch back and nontender Febles, letting him walk. This would be 'thinking out of the box' (ugh). But we all know that none of this will happen. Whenever I think back on Knoblauch's stay in KC, I'll always be dumbfounded by the fact that we never got to find out if Knoblauch could play second because the Royals never even tried. And worst of all, they didn't really have anything to lose.
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Paul Byrd was not traded because Allard Baird was holding out for a pivotman capable of starting right away. If the Mets could have been convinced to send pitching prospect Aaron Heilman to Toronto, Byrd would have ended up in New York and Orlando Hudson would be starting for the Royals right now. I suppose that it's not Baird's fault that the deal didn't go through but it is still frusturating. Baird is always slow in recognizing the need to change direction. The most successful team in unloading payroll and loading up on prospects was Cleveland. While Allard Baird was busy adding Knoblauch and Michael Tucker, putting the finishing touches on a roster he believed could contend for the playoffs this year, Tribe GM Mark Shapiro was already looking to 2004, sending Roberto Alomar to the Mets, the first of many moves that reduced payroll and which ultimately brought 19 new prospects into the Cleveland organization. He got super SS prospect Brandon Phillips, OF Alex Escobar, Ben Broussard and much, much more. With the young pitching that is already around, the Indians will be a talented, cost-efficient team in 2004 with a tremendous upside. Meanwhile the Royals are even further away from contending than they were at the end of 2001 because Baird erred yet again in his appraisal of where the Royals were in the winning cycle. I am currently penning an article on the Royals roster construction, their financial situation and have suggested a path to get where the Indians are by 2004. I've put enough work & research into this article that I'm going to attempt to publish it. If I'm successful, I'll post a link here. Even if I don't publish it, I'll put it up on my homepage and link to it here.
A useful trait in a small-market GM is the ability to think 'outside of the box'. (I hate that overused phrase and can't believe I used it. To me it is ironic that a term meant to refer to the unconventional is most often used in a sterile, homogenous corporate environment. Ugh.) Seems to me that Baird is far too conventional for a small-market GM. At the dawn of 2002, I personally had not yet given up on Carlos Febles. He had not yet made it through a season healthy and it is hard to forget the tremendous upside he had when he first arrived at the K. He had great range, a flair for the spectacular, he was a patient hitter with decent power and was a great base stealer. Now, at the age of 26, he is Chico Lind reincarnated. He has been healthy for the most part this season but has not developed. If anything, he has regressed. His range numbers (I warily use Stats' Zone Ratings as evidence of range, it's not perfect but as good as I can find) are in the lower quarter of AL second basemen, he has committed the second most errors at the position and his hitting has been awful. He goes through long stretches when he has trouble even getting the bat on the ball. I fear that all of the injuries have robbed him of his range and retarded his development as a batsmen beyond all hope. So I understand Baird's desire to replace him. And if he could have gotten Orlando Hudson or Marcus Giles, that would have been tremendous. But he didn't.
Back to Knoblauch. Am I the only one that lost track of the fact that standing in left field for the Royals is the man who, according to Win Shares, ranked as the second-best pivotman of the 1990's? Knoblauch's -14 VORP is near the bottom of AL outfielders. His numbers would also put him at the bottom of the pack of second basemen, but for the purpose of this rant, that is beside the point. The point is that if the Royals would have been willing to take the risk and put Knoblauch back at second, it could have been a big upgrade to the position. Also, left field would have been opened up for Dee Brown to continue his development at the Major League level. Brown, thrown for a loop after finding himself back in AAA, got off to a slugglish start but has been mashing the ball consistently for the last two months. But I fear that he has been set back an entire year by this demotion.
At this point, is it too late to mess with moving Knoblauch to second? After all, the season is lost and Knoblauch will be a free agent after the season. Can't imagine any scenario in which he would return, right? Well, how about this: if you move Knoblauch to second right now, then you find out if his throwing demons have been distinguished. Perhaps he even relaxes and begins to hit better. And then, after the season he's had, he might be willing to come back to KC for $1.5 - $2 million on another one-year deal. There may be better options via trade but if those fail, it would make more sense to bring Knoblauch back and nontender Febles, letting him walk. This would be 'thinking out of the box' (ugh). But we all know that none of this will happen. Whenever I think back on Knoblauch's stay in KC, I'll always be dumbfounded by the fact that we never got to find out if Knoblauch could play second because the Royals never even tried. And worst of all, they didn't really have anything to lose.
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