The almost-half-year MVP and Cy Young

When considering which Royal has been the most valuable, you have to address a few things first:

===John Buck.

John Buck: 415 innings, 49 games. .263/.348/.569
Jason LaRue: 213 innings, 28 games. .173/.236/.321
Paul Phillips: 24 innings, 4 games. .200/.273/.300

Obviously, John Buck is the best catcher available to the MLB Royals roster. I would make the fairly defensible statement that Buck is among the best offensive catchers in baseball right now. He is tied with Victor Martinez with most home runs by a catcher (13) despite playing in 14 less games and racking up 90 less plate appearances than Martinez. In terms of rate stats like batting average, OBP, SLG, only Jorge Posada is a better catcher. He might not be the best hitting catcher in the league (I’d give that to Posada right now), but he is the second best and easily the best power-hitting catcher in baseball.

Of course, this means that Buddy Bell must bench him.

For 32 games, Bell has played another, massively inferior catcher. For 24 remarkable games, Buck has never even tasted playing time despite being among the absolute best at his position. Words and logic cannot describe how bad an idea it is to bench the best hitter on your team so much. You can’t say he’s being benched to give him rest—games Buck has played DH this year: 0. It’s plain and simple. Over one-third of the innings this year have belonged to the wrong man.

Who knows how much this bench-and-play-and-bench-and-play jerking around has cost him (sound familiar? Hello, Billy Butler, Justin Huber, Jeremy Affeldt, Jimmy Gobble, David DeJesus, Zack Greinke...). Perhaps Buck would be hitting even better if he were allowed to, you know, hit.

Anyway, rant over. The question is this—what handicap do we give Buck? Do we penalize him for Buddy Bell’s indefensible benching, or just let the numbers speak for themselves? After all, Bell has hurt Buck’s value to the team and we’re looking for the most valuable player, so maybe Buck’s tainted goods even if it’s not his own fault.

===Defense.

This is, as far as I know, the most recent mass publishing of UZR. It was published 22 days ago, but it shows us a few things: (1) Tony Pena Jr. is among league leaders in defense and is among the very elite in shortstop defense; (2) Most other Royals are either mediocrely good or mediocrely bad. Except for Billy Butler who was a -4 in 4 games—truly impressive. (3) It also showed the beginning of David DeJesus struggling defensively this year.

===Pitching. We’re just going to call the Cy Young for pitchers and the MVP for batters, rightly or wrongly. I’m saying this without looking at the numbers (I say that now because I would imagine Gil Meche might be the actual MVP of the team, but we’ll see). So MVP = Most Valuable P(Batter)layer, Cy Young = Best Pitcher.

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MVP Candidates:

John Buck. We’ve covered a lot of his accomplishments already. We’ll just say that he’s one of the very best offensive catchers in baseball right now and seems to be around average defensively. He’s hitting .263/.348/.569, good for an OPS+ of 131. His 19 BB/36 K ratio is much improved over his past ratios: 15/79, 23/94, 26/84 in 2004, 2005 and 2006, respectively. Also, he has 3.9 pitches per plate appearance this year compared to the 3.5, 3.5 and 3.7 he’s had in the past. He’s controlling the plate really well. What’s amazing is how he’s achieving all this success. Earlier in the year, I made this remark about Buck:

[… F]or now, I’m a little bit concerned with where he’s hitting the ball. Eyeballing it, he is hitting almost exactly 50% of his balls in the air which would normally spell disaster were it not for his nutso 29.4% home run/fly ball ratio (waaay up from last year’s 12.9% ratio). He’s uppercutting everything, and so far it has worked—but John Buck isn’t really what I’d call a regular Frank Thomas. In a month, when he’s hitting 2-of-25, we’ll know the answer—he’s still popping them up, but they’re not quite making it over the fence anymore. Swinging for the fences all the time rarely works, and I’m afraid we’re going to see Buck learn this the hard way.

How arrogantly wrong! I don’t know how he has maintained this, but he has. He is still almost hitting 50% of his balls into the air. And his nutso HR/fly ball ratio has only dropped to 24.7%. Perhaps he is a regular Frank Thomas, who just decided to uppercut this year to monster success.

Tony Pena. Okay, his .273 batting average and league-elite defense looks less impressive when considering his smallish .294 OBP and .360 SLG, even if you adjust for the fact that he’s not Angel Berroa. His outstanding 6-to-45 BB/K ratio can often make one wonder if Berroa is truly gone or if we have a spiffier-gloved version in his stead, and the fact that he’s third behind Mike Sweeney and Mark Teahen in double plays grounded into is weird. Still, if there were an award for most impressive turnaround at a position, Pena’s production at shortstop would probably beat out Buck’s catcher position turnaround. No, I’m not legitimately considering him for the MVP.

Mark Teahen. He’s hitting .284/.366/.420 and is, at 71 games played, up there with Tony Pena and David DeJesus in playing time. He has a 1:2 BB/K ratio. He is the only other regular Royal starter besides Buck with an OPS+ over 100. It’s not that great though, as he weighs in at an OPS+ of 102. His defense this year has been below average in some regards (speed, reactions) and above average in some regards (throwing arm, assists). I’d say he’s a notch above-average in the grand scheme of right fielders, but I don’t have any UZR numbers or anything to back that up. He has really lost some power hitting this year, which—regardless of our MVP race here—is discouraging.

Reggie Sanders. No I am not kidding. The fact that a 39-year-old who has played in 14 games is honestly under a team’s MVP consideration is frightening. But before he was injured, his .367/.446/.612 batting line over those 14 games easily leads the whole team in rate stats. His OPS+ of 169 leads the team. Of course, the fact that he has played a fifth of Teahen’s and DeJesus’ games will probably spell the end of Sanders’ MVP bid.

David DeJesus. Things DeJesus leads the team in: Games, at bats, plate appearances, runs, hits, total bases, singles, extra-base hits, times on base. He also leads the team in outs. He has a hitting line of .273/.351/.401. OPS+ is 93. He gets bonus points for being there a lot, and for not completely stinking while being there. His defense has suffered this year—at last UZR update, DeJesus’ numbers were ugly. But he’s usually better than that, so for now let’s just write it off as aberration.

AND THE MVP IS...

Basically it comes down to whether you value playing time or quality of play more. If we’re talking quality, Buck wins in a cake walk. If we’re purely talking playing time and counting stats, I’d lean toward DeJesus. If we’re somewhere in the middle (but leaning certainly toward an emphasis on playing time and less on quality), it’s probably Teahen. If we’re exactly half quality and half quantity, it’s between Buck and Teahen, but I think it’s Buck.

My vote is John Buck, but I’m but an uninformed fool just blogging about the Royals.

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Cy Young Candidates:

Pitcher A: 3.21 ERA (147 ERA+), 4-6 record.
Pitcher B: 3.21 ERA (147 ERA+), 4-3 record.

A is Gil Meche, B is Brian Bannister. Of course, I think looking at more numbers (Ks, BBs, ball placement, etc., etc.), Meche is the better pitcher. But using traditional stats makes Bannister look pretty darn good, especially in comparison to Super-Sign Meche.

Gil Meche. See this post by Clark Fosler at the great Royals Authority.

Brian Bannister. Good ERA and record (see above), but iffy 1/2 BB/K numbers tells me Meche has been the better starter. I really like Bannister’s production this year but (A) we’ll have to keep a tab on him because he might not be doing this well all year (B) Meche has been the better starter and has started a third more games. It’s a pretty easy call.

Jimmy Gobble. The LOOGY. Besides Neal Musser (and I guess Jorge de la Rosa for like four pitches), Gobble is the only left-handed pitcher who has relieved this year. And so, because of this, he usually only faces one or maybe two batters. Since May 22 (a month ago today), Gobble has pitched in 14 games and allowed only two earned runs (three runs total), but has recorded more than one out in a game only five times. But it has worked. His ERA (2.59) and ERA+ (182) lead the team.

David Riske. Despite an iffy start, Riske has really recovered strongly, proving to be another valuable signing from Dayton Moore. 33 games, 2.70 ERA (175 ERA+). His K/BB numbers are iffy, so we’ll just leave it at that.

Joakim Soria. 2.73 ERA over 27 appearances. He leads the team with 10 saves.

AND THE CY YOUNG WINNER IS...

This discussion has worn down quickly. I think it’s Meche because he’s the best starter and none of the relievers have really distinguished themselves from the pack, be it bad peripherals, bad ERA, low appearance numbers, etc. Not that that’s a bad thing—Click this and scroll down to “Team Pitching”. The five main relievers are really doing pretty well. I think that bullpen is acceptable, really (yes, even Peralta). It’s just that none of them are setting themselves apart. I’ll call it Meche for now.

Any disagreements out there? Agreements? Thoughts?