2009 Shortstop Position reivew

Now this one should get ugly. Good old SS, the position the Royals have never seemed to have covered. As any Royals fan who is reading a Royals blog in January should know, 2009 was no exception to the rule. So, lets start out with who played the position in 2009.

Name	G	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	H	R	HR	RBI	BB	SO
Yuniesky Betancourt	71	.240	.269	.370	.639	59	25	4	27	11	26
Tony Pena	40	.098	.132	.118	.250	5	3	0	2	2	13
Willie Bloomquist	38	.278	.400	.250	.650	37	10	1	15	6	24
Mike Aviles	34	.190	.215	.259	.473	22	10	1	8	4	26
Luis Hernandez	23	.196	.250	.214	.464	11	3	0	4	3	13
Alberto Callaspo	1	.250	.307	.391	.698	1	1	0	0	1	1
Tug Hulett	1	.000	.000	.000	.000	0	1	0	0	0	0

Sigh.

Mike Aviles was the SS after his breakout 2008 season. Every rational fan expected a dropoff, but what happened was a Lehman Bros like drop. Baseball is a game of individual performances combined to provide a team outcome. While I cannot prove it, I believe that a single individual in baseball can improve a team moreso than in football (sans QB probably). Mike Aviles at SS in 2008 vs the trash the Royals threw out there in 2009 is an extremely big difference in total team outcome. It is this theory that I think the Royals could be best served over spending on one really good player instead of 4 or 5 decent or even below average players.

So using the wRC stat from www.fangraphs.com, how big of a change was the SS position from 2008 to 2009?

2009 - 36.7
2008 - 53.2

So the offensive production out of our SS position in 2009 is approximately 16.5 runs fewer than in 2008. By itself that is a big difference, but Mike Aviles in 2008 had 54 wRC in his 376 ABs and the other shortstops in 2008 had a combined -.8 in their 273 ABs.

So, is it a coincidence that the Royals had a winning record in 2008 from the time that Hillman finally let Aviles be the everyday SS? Maybe, but it certainly had something to do with it. The Royals were able in 2008 to upgrade from the worst everyday hitter in baseball to a very good one. That is the essence of these position reviews, where can the Royals upgrade the most and what positions are most in need of upgrade. Enough ranting on 2008.

So Aviles was hurt and fell off the map, the Royals turned to Bloomquist who was not great but not Pena either. I was in agreement that the Royals needed to upgrade from Bloomquist at the SS position, however Dayton went out and acquired via trade Yuniesky Betancourt.

It was a shocker, primarily becasue he WASN'T better than Bloomquist. It seemed insane at the time and still seems insane. When Dayton Moores tenure as GM ends, if it ends badly the Yuni trade will likely be the signature moment. This could be his Dye for Perez move (shockingly another SS blunder).

In baseball there seems to be a ledger somewhere that tells you what a player should be, and it cannot be changed. Somewhere that ledger shows that Yuniesky is a SS and that Bloomquist is not. No matter what you ever see in reality, those facts cannot be changed. This happens all the time. A guy gets pegged as something and he cannot change the establishments mind.

So in came Yuniesky, the blogosphere erupted into anger and Dayton defended the move the way he usually does: by telling people they are too dumb to understand. I wonder if anybody in the Royals front office realized that Bloomquist had a OBP as a SS of .400 while Yuni was .269. The only thing I saw Yuni do better than Bloomquist was hit homeruns.

So how did this ragtag group of SS compare to the league?

Column1	Split	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	sOPS+
Rays	as SS	.326	.392	.513	.904	150
Yankees	as SS	.332	.401	.467	.868	141
Angels	as SS	.315	.360	.422	.783	117
Blue Jays	as SS	.280	.367	.407	.774	116
Indians	as SS	.284	.337	.421	.757	110
White Sox	as SS	.273	.337	.399	.736	104
Athletics	as SS	.284	.330	.386	.716	99
Rangers	as SS	.268	.330	.371	.701	95
Twins	as SS	.263	.309	.374	.683	89
Red Sox	as SS	.234	.297	.358	.655	82
Tigers	as SS	.250	.302	.342	.644	79
Orioles	as SS	.249	.290	.323	.613	71
Mariners	as SS	.231	.262	.335	.597	65
Royals	as SS	.222	.251	.319	.570	58

Yowzers. Having a position perform that poor compared to its peers is how you lose lots of games. Only the Mariners LF (57) and the Twins 2B (54) were worse in the AL. We know the Royals always seem to have terrible SS, so was this the worst group of the decade?

Year	sOPS+	Primary SS
2003	114	Berroa
2004	90	Berroa
2005	88	Berroa
2001	84	Sanchez
2008	76	Aviles
2007	73	Pena
2000	71	Sanchez
2002	60	Perez
2009	58	Betancourt
2006	56	Berroa

Nope, somehow the 2006 crew of Berroa and Blanco was worse. I think this chart can be summed up as "be careful what you wish for". While Berroa went downhill on offense and was the primary SS in the worst season of the decade, he had 3 pretty good seasons at the plate.

So clearly the SS position is an obvious place to upgrade the team. It was so bad, that an upgrade merely to league average would be a huge boost. However, there seem to be no attempts by the Royals to make a change at the SS position. They are content with Yuniesky Betancourt for the time being and they might give Aviles a shot if he is recovered.