Developing Players

When you look at the other "youth movements" around the major leagues, it's hard not to be jealous of other teams young talent. The A's traded away their two prized starters and figured to be in a rebuilding year. The A's struggled at the beginning of the season. For a while, their record was almost as bad as the Royals. But, they've recovered and are leading the wildcard race right now. Their success is largely due to the development of good young talent on their team. The A's and the Indians have a core of young players that are producing and have some veteran players to add stability.

Why are the Royals so bad at develop young players? First of all, let's take a look at the last "youth movement" in 2003. This youth movement included Berroa, Harvey, MacDougal, Affeldt, Asencio, Carrasco, Snyder, Gobble, George, Hernandez, and Brown. That's a lot of young players to have on a team. So, how does that "youth movement" look 2 years later?

Miserable Failures: Harvey, Asencio, Snyder, Gobble, George, Brown
Questionable Future: Berroa, Carrasco (can he keep it up?), Affeldt (will he contribute before becoming a FA?)
Average Players: MacDougal, Hernandez

So, out of that group of 11 young players, 6 failured miserably, 3 are still here but not really in the future (at least if the team is going to be any good), and 2 have become average players. I think we have to consider that "youth movement" a bust. Except for developing centerfielders (Damon, Beltran, and DeJesus), this organization really hasn't done a good job at developing players.

The biggest problem has been the Royals' inability to develop starting pitching. The Royals have had plenty of talent to develop over the past 5 years after focusing on pitching in the draft. But, the Royals have developed one average starter (perhaps generously rated average) Hernandez. You can't win without good starting pitching. Free agent starting pitching is very expensive and has a high risk.

The Royals have done very little to correct this problem. Here are the major organizational flaws that have hurt the Royals ability to develop starters:

1. Rushing starters to the majors: This one is a big problem. The Royals have promoted many starters prematurely, without spending much, if any time at AAA. At AAA, young pitchers face guys like Pickering and Guiel who have major league experience and won't miss mistake pitches that a young hitter at AA might. Each of the Big Three spent significant time at AAA before joining the big league team.

2. Converting Starters into Relievers: The Royals seem to convert every talented pitcher that came up as a starter into a reliever. The trend started with Affeldt. Affeldt wasn't great as a starter, but he wasn't terrible. He was a league-average starter in his first two seasons as a starter (the Royals have developed one league-average starter). His blister problems had disappeared, so who knows what might have happened if he stays in the rotation. The Royals already converted their best young arms, Sisco, Burgos, and Nunez into relievers.

There's probably a lot more factors that have contributed to the Royals' failure to develop young starters and other young players. But, the Royals need to make some major changes. The Royals can add all of the talent they want. But, until they start developing good, young talent (especially in the rotation), the Royals will never be competitive. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this youth movement really isn't different from the 2003 "youth movement". The only difference is that the 2003 team had some decent veterans who had career years and made that team pretty good.

On another note, the Royals lose their 17th straight game. The Royals need to make some serious changes this offseason.