Cormack on MLB: Worth a click, Dec. 10

So Joe Posnanski, how do you feel about Sunday’s Rays-Royals trade?

“It goes without saying that in pure baseball terms, I despise the Royals trade of late Sunday night,” Posnanski wrote on his blog Monday. “Despise. Deplore. Deride. Disapprove. If there was a Royals Tradebook Page, I would click the “dislike” button at least 10,000 times.”

And that was just the lead.

Posnanski is not alone. Kansas City’s decision Sunday to ship Wil Myers, Jake Odorizzi, Mike Montgomery and Patrick Leonard to Tampa Bay in exchange for James Shields and Wade Davis has elicited strong opinion, and a healthy amount of scorn, from many, if not most, analyzing the deal.

The rancour from those such as Posnanski boils down to the Royals decision to sacrifice one of the top hitting prospects in all of baseball (Myers) for essentially two years of team control of Shields and hopefully, the chance to contend in a weak AL Central.

The key word there being hopefully.

The Royals possess a young, deeply-talented lineup, but in 2012 their starters posted a 5.01 ERA (11th in AL) en route to 72-win season.

Kansas City’s Dayton Moore has been GM of the club for six (losing) seasons and he can surely hear his biological GM clock ticking, hence moves earlier this off-season to bolster his rotation by adding Ervin Santana and Jeremy Guthrie in a trade and via free agency respectively.

The Royals haven’t posted a winning season since 2003 and have now cashed in a major chip betting that the streak comes to an end in 2013.

Posnanski’s blog entry was titled “A desperate grab for hope,” a cynical sentiment — and adjective — regarding the Royals gambit that was widely shared elsewhere.

In his piece titled, “Royals mortgage future to be mediocre in 2013,” Dave Cameron writes, “Two winning seasons in 20 years can make a franchise desperate for respectability. And desperate teams often do desperate things. But I don’t think anyone saw the Royals doing something this desperate.”

ESPN Prospect guru Keith Law (insider only) says the deal “reeks of a GM feeling pressure to improve short-term performance to keep his job,” later describing it as a “heist” and a “potential franchise-making deal that should allow the Rays to continue their run of contention on a dime for several more years.”

Meanwhile, the always-sensible, Rob Neyer of SB Nation drops the “D” word again, writing: “This is a desperate move by a desperate team.”

In reality, the deal will only be viewed a heist for Tampa Bay if A.) Myers and at least one other prospect becomes an effective major leaguer and B.) the Royals fail to sniff the playoffs with Shields in tow.

Myers — the 2012 Baseball America Minor League Player of the Year — is unproven at the big-league level, but as Neyer points out, winning that award suggests he is more than likely the real deal.

“Here are the last 10 non-pitchers who won that award: Mike Trout, Jason Heyward, Matt Wieters, Jay Bruce, Alex Gordon, Delmon Young, Joe Mauer, Rocco Baldelli, Eric Chavez, Paul Konerko. Oh, and the previous five awards? Andruw Jones twice, Derek Jeter, Manny Ramirez, and Tim Salmon.”

That is quite the roll call and it should do a lot to allay concerns surrounding Myers’ 61/140 walk-to-strikeout rate in 2012 between double-A and triple-A. His rate in lower levels between 2009-11 was a much more selective 146/199.

As great as Wil Myers may be, there are concerns about his swing-and-miss proclivity and power potential. He is not close to 100% sure thing

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 10, 2012

Regardless of what Myers is, or may become, it’s worth asking whether he was expendable to the Royals given their needs and short-term goals.

As mentioned, the Royals are flush with offensive talent it was a given entering the off-season that they were willing to trade a young bat in exchange for an arm. And by holding onto the likes of Alex Gordon, Eric Hosmer and Billy Butler the Royals are unquestionably a better team today than they were yesterday.

Few would argue the same can be said for Tampa Bay in what remains a wide-open AL East.

Perhaps the best take on the trade has been offered by Jeff Passan of Yahoo! who hits the slider right on the sweet spot here:

“The fetishization of prospects is a baseball-wide malady, and it’s why sentiment skewed decidedly in the Rays’ favor. Granted, it should — Myers has the sort of talent that wins awards, Odorizzi looks like a mid-rotation starter, Montgomery is a high-ceiling left-hander and Leonard comes with the one tool, power, that everybody wants — but not nearly to the degree it did.”

Later, he adds:

“This trade will define Dayton Moore’s tenure as Royals GM more than any of his other moves because it marked the day he declared Kansas City a contender. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe Wil Myers will be another Ryan Braun or maybe he’ll be another Brandon Wood. Even the surest thing in this trade, James Shields, is a maybe because he throws a baseball, and nothing in the game is quite as fallible as a pitcher’s arm.”

Kansas City is betting it can make a playoff run sometime in the next two years while Tampa is betting Myers is the real deal.

In a perfect economic world in which Tampa could afford to keep Shields beyond 2014 would they still have made this deal, or would they instead have looked to trade one of their younger, less experienced arms for Myers or perhaps a more proven big-league bat?

It’s a great question, and one I’d love to ask Rays manager Joe Maddon following a few sociable beverages.

HATE..HATE to lose James and Wade. But this who we are. This is how we have to operate. Excited about the guys we are getting.

— Joe Maddon (@RaysJoeMaddon) December 10, 2012

If the Rays turned down the opportunity to acquire a more proven bat in exchange for Shields due to financial considerations, perhaps it’s worth asking whether the Royals weren’t the only team in this transaction motivated by some sense of desperation.

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