In recent weeks, the season has gone from disappointing to ugly.  Thankfully with September call-ups, we now have something to be excited about.  Welcome to the Kansas City Royals, Micah Kila Kaaihue (or Ka’aihue, depending on the source).  It’s good to really have something to look forward to when watching Royals games as they play out the string.  Part of me wants Kila to not get overexposed in September.  Part of me wants him to play everyday.  God only knows what Trey Hillman is thinking (at any time, about anything).

In 2001, Royals Scouting Director Deric Ladnier was on a scouting trip in Hawaii to watch Bronson Sardinha and Brandon League.  While he was there, he saw Kaaihue.  Sardinha and League went in the first two rounds of the draft that year and the Royals took Kila in the 15th round in 2002.  Kila comes from a baseball background, as his father Kala was a career minor league catcher (his nickname was "Krash" Kaaihue) and his brother, also named Kala, is a catcher in the Braves system (bloodlines!).

The brothers Kaaihue

I think we’re all familiar with Kila’s story.  Through most of his minor league career, he had pretty good plate discipline and some raw power, but for the most part, it didn’t give rise to very impressive stats (another toolsy prospect).  And then, this year at age 24, he absolutely exploded.

 The secret must be that he got mean this year.

I was curious if there were any other players who had comparable minor league track records who came to the majors and succeeded to some degree.  So, I spent far too much time looking through baseball-reference.com and thebaseballcube.com, looking at a bunch of first basemen to see what kind of comps I could find.  This was not an exhaustive study of every MLB first basemen, but I did cover a lot of ground.

In short, my comp criteria were:

1.      Came to the majors as a first baseman.

2.      Didn’t make his major league debut until his age 24 season at the earliest.

3.      Had a somewhat spotty, somewhat inconsistent minor league track record.

4.      Followed a minor league career path (age, level and stats) roughly similar to Kila.

There were no perfect comps.  I couldn’t find any first baseman who had stats quite as poor as Kila who suddenly blossomed at age 24.  There might be one, but I didn’t run into him.  But I did find some interesting, rough comps.

Steve Balboni

MLB debut: 24

# of MLB seasons: 11

Peak season OPS+: 123

Career OPS+: 101

Jeff King

MLB debut: 24

# of MLB seasons: 11

Peak season OPS+: 116

Career OPS+: 99

J.T. Snow

MLB debut: 24

# of MLB seasons: 15

Peak season OPS+: 146

Career OPS+: 105

Ryan Howard

MLB debut: 24

# of MLB seasons: 5 (active)

Peak season OPS+: 167

Career OPS+: 139

Jason Giambi

MLB debut: 24

# of MLB seasons: 14 (active)

Peak season OPS+: 198

Career OPS+: 146

One thing you’ll notice is that all of these comps started their professional careers at age 21 or later because they were all college draftees, whereas Kaaihue was drafted out of high school.  So Kila got some of his rough, early developing years out of the way in the low minors, while these other players did it in college.  But if you’ll compare Kila’s numbers from age 21 on to the other players, you’ll see something roughly similar.  Some ups, some downs and for most of them a late peak.

What does all of this mean?  That’s hard to say.  Certainly there is more precedent for a player of his pedigree to succeed in the majors than someone like Mike Aviles.  And the above list is pretty damn good.  All but one of those comps received MVP votes at some point in his career and two won MVP awards.  Let’s hope Kila can match at least one of those comps.  Pomaika’i, Kila.

 There hasn’t been a Royals Confidence Index (RCI) since June.  I guess that’s probably since there hasn’t been much of any confidence since June.  But I made up for that with a new snazzy logo!  There may not be much reason to measure the confidence of Royals fans in the 2008 team with only a month left, but if they can play out the string, so can we.  The good news is that in the next RCI the questions will be about the 2009 team.  The last RCI was 5.56.  Feeling better about the team now?  Yeah, I know.

Here's the deal.  For each of these questions, give me a number from 1-10.  1 means you feel very bad/unhappy/negative about the item in question right now.  10 means you feel extremely good/happy/positive about it.  (If you want to use decimals like 6.5, feel free).

1. How do you feel about the 2008 Royals team overall?

2. How do you feel about the 2008 Royals pitching?

3. How do you feel about the 2008 Royals hitting?

4. How do you feel about the 2008 Royals defense?

5. How do you feel about Dayton Moore?

6. How do you feel about Trey Hillman?

7. How do you feel about the Royals minor league system?

8. How do you feel about the Royals future?

Bonus questions (these have no bearing on the RCI):

A.     Which positions do you think should be the Royals top three priorities for offseason acquisitions.  (Please rank the top priority #1, the second #2 and the third #3).

1.

2.

3.

B.    How many plate appearances do you think Kila Kaaihue will have with the KC Royals in 2008?

C.    How many plate appearances do you think Kaaihue will have with the KC Royals in 2009?

D.    What is the percentage chance that Eric Hosmer’s contract gets voided?  (0-100%)

I recently ran across some very interesting clips of Japanese pitchers that I thought I'd share (so don't run off because this is full of potentially boring text about pitches and pitching -- there are many cool video clips in here).  I'm something of a pitching buff and I find it both interesting and unfortunate that there isn't more innovation in American pitching.  There are more good pitches to be invented and discovered, but it seems like American pitchers are just working on the same old pitches.  I'm not saying that they shouldn't try to perfect the fastball, curveball, slider, etc., but isn't there value in new pitches as well?  Hell, American pitchers are not only not inventing new pitches, they are also forgetting old ones (where have you gone, screwball?).  Well, regardless, the Japanese are hard at work on building the better mousetrap.

via us.i1.yimg.com

Any discussion of interesting Japanese pitches begins with the gyroball.  One of the most interesting things about this pitch is that its very existence is in dispute.  Some say it is merely a myth or legend.  Many others claim to have actually invented the pitch.  Descriptions of what the pitch is, how it moves and how it is thrown are as varied as types of sushimi.  

via graphics.boston.com

The most common description of the gyroball involves it being thrown with an outward, as opposed to inward twist of the wrist (unlike a slider, curve or cut fastball).  This may sound like a screwball, but a screwball is really more a reverse curveball, with the ball being given something close to topspin, making it break down and to the right from a right handed pitcher.  The spin imparted to a gyroball is like that of a football thrown with a perfect spiral (that kind of spin, but counter clockwise from a righty instead of clockwise).  Fastballs have backspin, curveballs have topspin and gyroballs have a lateral spin.  Theoretically, this gives the ball a break to the right from a RHP, like a screwball but different from the screwball in that it doesn't have the same kind of downward break.  in short, while a screwball might have an 11-to-5 break, the gyroball has more of a 9-to-3 break from a RHP.  That's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean.

via media.collegepublisher.com

Of all of the videos I've seen of pitchers supposedly throwing a gyroball, I think this clip of Tetsuro Kawajiri shows the gyroball best.  The clip shows him striking out Jay Payton and Carlos Delgado in the 2000 Japan-U.S. All-Star Series.  Notice how both Payton and Delgado swing under the pitch because it just doesn't break downward as one would expect it to.  Daisuke Matsuzaka claims that he never intentionally throws the gyroball in games, but occasionally accidentally throws one as a mistake and sometimes throws them in workouts.  This clip supposedly shows him throwing on in a Japanese league game, but it doesn't look at all like a gyroball or anything particularly special or interesting to me.

One of the most recent Japanese pitch inventions is Satoru Komiyama's pitch which he calls the "shake."  It appears to be a knuckleball-like pitch which is thrown with something resembling a forkball grip.  In this clip, you can see the easy, Wakefield-like arm motion and that the pitch is thrown from 87-92 kph (54-57 mph).  And it appears that he, like extreme knuckleballers like Wakefield, throw the pitch almost exclusively.  It has wild, unpredictable movement like the knuckleball and appears almost to be in slow motion.

An older Japanese pitch invention is the shuuto.  It is a high velocity breaking ball with a break opposite to that of a slider.  Like the screwball, it breaks down and in to a righty batter from a RHP.  Because of this, it is often confused with the screwball and gyroball.  It is sometimes referred to as a "reverse slider."  The way I see it, the screwball is the opposite of a curveball.  They both are much slower than a fastball with a lot of break.  The difference is the directions in which they break, which is caused by the spin given the ball at release.  You can think of a shuuto as the opposite of a slider.  They are both high velocity pitches (though not as fast as a fastball) but they break in opposite directions.  In this clip, you can see a montage of Japanese shuuto's.

On Youtube, you will find many clips of Japanese pitchers making pitched balls do all kinds of crazy, impressive things.  There are at least three reasons for this:

1. They have some very good pitchers.

2. Japanese pitching focuses more on movement and change of speeds than blowing hitters away with maximum velocity.

3. The ball used in Japanese baseball is smaller with seams that are raised off the surface of the ball higher.  This helps the pitchers grip and spin the ball better, and for aerodynamic reasons, the higher seams help the ball move more.

Some examples of crazy impressive ball movement can be seen these clips of Masaki Hayashi's incredible looping slider, Shinji Imanaka's slow curve, and Chihiro Kaneko's harder curveball. 

Last month, Will (royalsreview) reviewed the changes Dayton Moore has made to the big league roster since taking the reins of the organization in the 2006 season.  In Part I, he reviewed the major league position players and in Part II, he reviewed the major league pitchers.

In addition to inheriting a poor major league team, Dayton Moore inherited a minor league system that was in tatters.  According to Baseball America, this is how the Royals minor league system ranked in the five years leading up to his take over: 

Now let’s see how the Royals top 20 prospects have changed from the organization that Moore inherited during the 2006 season to the one they have now (2006 is BA’s list and 2009 is my list):

Bold = acquired during Dayton Moore’s tenure as GM

* The Royals, Braves and Dayton Moore made a deal that Moore would take over as GM in late May 2006 but not take part in the Royals amateur draft.  While some don’t believe Moore did not take part in the draft decisions in 2006, I think that Moore would and did honor the deal that he and the Royals made with the Braves.  So I don’t give him the credit or blame for anything in the 2006 draft.  If you disagree with this assessment, then Moore gets the credit/blame for Blake Wood and Derrick Robinson.

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