MM#4: The Sickness

Oh you Royals. You're so silly. You're just playing with us, right? Just teasing? You didn't actually re-sign Luke Hochevar to a new contract, did you? Hasn't he had enough chances to prove he's not worthy? If you count a finger for every time you say that this could be the year he steps up from “promise” to “production,” and you need a second hand to get through all of them... well, maybe that's a sign, don't you think? Surely, after six years you know what you have in a player. Surely you can't be serious, right?

Oh, they're serious. The Royals re-signed Luke Hochevar to a one-year, $4.65 million deal. Not only did they not cut ties with him, they actually gave him more money. They thought he deserved a raise after he went 8-16 and had an ERA of … wait for it … 5.73! Among starting pitchers in the AL last season that pitched more than 120 innings, only one player had a higher ERA... one... and he had elbow surgery immediately after the season, so he at least has a plausible excuse for his terrible numbers. I'm not meaning to pick on Hochevar. Hell, he's already made in a couple years playing a game more than I'll ever hope to make in my lifetime No, this isn't about Hochevar being a bad pitcher, he's just doing what anyone would do in his place. This is about the Royals.

The Royals have a sickness. It's a sickness of being controlled by the fear of loss. It's partly a result of limited resources, partly a result of unwillingness to spend money, and probably even partly a result of arrogance. The sickness means that they have to hold onto a pitcher because he's cheap enough and he could just come good. Could. “But what if you let him go and he signs for another team and starts tearing it up for them? Well, you just lost out, buddy.... and all we had to do was give him one more year.” And there you have it. That's the fear. It's as simple as that. Every organization has that fear, I'm sure, but it seems that only the Royals let it rule them. That's the sickness.

You only have to look back a couple years to see the most recent example before Hochevar. For years, the Royals drew league-wide criticism for continuing to throw Kyle Davies out there every five days. He wasn't an awful pitcher, but he was an awful starting pitcher. I seem to recall reading stats that put him in the bottom 10-20 worst starting pitchers of all time (with a minimum number of starts). Because he had so many starts to his name, thanks to the Royals and their sickness, his name gets, almost unfairly, lumped in with some of the most infamous record holders. Other starting pitchers have been far worse, but their organizations haven't been so inept (or unwilling to spend) that they were able to rack up enough starts to get on that crap heap. Those pitchers, logically, got cut from the team or, at the minimum, moved to the bullpen.

“Let's try it again, Kyle. Maybe today is the day you turn on that light for good. Oh, you didn't make it past the fourth inning? Well, you got another start coming up in five days. That'll be your day.” Start after start, year after year. See, Davies was the pitcher he was always going to be, regardless of how many times we were told that he has potential to be better. The Royals just couldn't let him go because .. well, what if? Luke Hochevar is Kyle Davies: Part II... and that's just the latest. There's Luke Hochevars and Kyle Davieses going back years and years.

What's so much worse about this time? Well, in previous years, while the Royals had the same sickness, we were where we belonged – in a hospital. Our team was horrible and we were right where everyone expects you to be when you have a sickness. It wasn't surprising, and frankly, made sense when you think about it – one begets the other.

But this off-season, we took our medicine and we got better. We got out of that uncomfortable bed and took off that awful gown. We buttoned up our shirt and even put on a tie. We were getting out of this place; we were getting discharged from that hospital. Yep, we spent a boatload of cash on free agents (Jeremy Guthrie and Ervin Santana, though Santana was technically a trade) and traded away perhaps the best prospect in the game today (Will Myers) to improve our starting rotation (James Shields and Wade Davis). Even the harshest critics of the move acknowledge that it greatly improves our rotation. They may say we gave up too much, or that we only moved up to an average-quality starting rotation now, but again, even an average rotation is greatly improved over what we had last year and years previous.

Indeed, we were back out amongst the world, getting up and going to work everyday, meeting up with friends and going to your local pubs and restaurants. Things were better. Things were … normal. At dinner one night, we say to our friends, “You know, it's great to be back out with you guys. We thought we'd let you in on the good news. We re-signed Luke Hochevar for another year and gave him a raise.” And then we immediately threw up all over the table.