I got my copy of Baseball Prospectus 2003 yesterday and I can't put it down. I'll probably be throwing up random things from the book on here for a while. You should all go buy it, if you love baseball. If you don't love baseball, learn to love baseball.

Anyway, today's shocking thing comes to us courtesy of the Kansas City Royals. Now, I didn't pay much attention to the Royals last year, given how much they sucked (record: 62-100) and the fact that they play in the AL Central. So I did not realize just how much they really sucked. They had Chuck Knoblauch, Brent Mayne and Neifi Perez on the team at the same time. And they all got at least 300 at bats! Alas, this wasn't quite as sad as it could have been, as they didn't have Knoblauch playing second base, but it's still really something. Let's look at some numbers.

Knoblauch hit a dismal .210/.286/.300 (avg/obp/slg) in exactly 300 at bats over 71 games. BP says of him, "No longer worth the roster spot, except as a pinch-runner and as someone who can lean into a curveball and pick up a cheap hit-by-pitch when you need it." He's 35 years old and his numbers have plummeted over the last three years. Even the Royals have better options in LF than this guy.

Of Mayne, Bill James said, "It was really watching Brent Mayne play that broke my spirit, and caused me to abandon all hope for this organization. He's just awful; he is just frigging awful. He can't hit, he can't throw, he doesn't hustle, he is slow as a tank rolling uphill, and he's now 34 years old. Why in the worldl they don't just release Brent Mayne and try to find somebody who can play at least a little bit is beyond me." Mayne hit .236/.312/.310 in 93 games as catcher. So the Royals released A.J. Hinch, who hit .249/.321/.409 for a salary less than the current league minimum and kept Mayne and his multimillion dollar deal.

And then there's Neifi Perez. BP lists his position as "SS/Cancer" and they're not referring to his astrological sign. He hit .236/.263/.303 in 135 games. "Put it this way: replacing Perez with a league-average hitter would help the Royals more than replacing Michael Tucker with Shawn Green would." Tucker hit .248/.331/.406, in case you're not familiar with him. Perez signed a two year deal with San Francisco. As a Mets fan, I love to see a player this spectacularly awful on his way to the NL.

So how did the Royals manage to lose only 100 games? Well, there's Carlos Beltran (who apparently wants out of KC when his contract is up, and who can blame him?) and there's Mike Sweeney (who actually took less money that he could've gotten elsewhere to stay there). But I thought it was amusing that three players who showed no reason to deserve a starting spot on a major league roster could get so much playing time on the same team.  ¶ joe | 1:34 AM |