<table> </table> SURPRISE, Ariz. | What&#8217;s left of a fast-food chicken meal sits on a table in the middle of the clubhouse. A few pieces remain, but it&#8217;s mostly crumbs. Two Royals players sit around the table. A third approaches.</p><p>&#8220;Whose chicken?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I think it was Guillen&#8217;s. You ate Guillen&#8217;s chicken. He&#8217;s gonna kick your ass.&#8221;</p><p>There is laughter. They&#8217;re joking. It&#8217;s not really Jos&#233; Guillen&#8217;s chicken. But, truthfully, they don&#8217;t know what he&#8217;d do if it was.</p><p>This will be Guillen&#8217;s second season as the highest-paid player in Royals history, and the second season that nobody is sure what to expect.</p><p>All sides hope it&#8217;s better than last year.</p><p>&#8226;&#8226;&#8226;</p><p>Jos&#233; Guillen knows this conversation is coming. There are tough questions coming, and he&#8217;ll give you all the time you need to ask them.</p><p>He is back with the Royals only because of a mistake that can&#8217;t be redone. He knows this, too. The Royals tried to trade him in the offseason, but nobody wanted the two years and $24 million remaining on his contract. Guillen underperformed Bobby Abreu last year, and Abreu signed for one year and $5 million.</p><p>Over the next 40 minutes or so, Guillen will contradict himself a couple of times, blame others for part of his image problem, and blame himself for most of it. He is brutally honest and will say some things sure to tick off the people who already don&#8217;t like him.</p><p>But he will make one point more often than any other: He screwed up last year. He showed up 20 to 30 pounds heavy last spring, and it created a brutal first six weeks of the season that in some ways he never recovered from.</p><p>&#8220;One thing I can promise you, coming from the beginning of the season,&#8221; Guillen says, &#8220;it&#8217;s going to be different from last year. I feel strong. I feel lighter. I feel ready. I put myself in that situation with all the stuff that happened last year. It is completely my fault.</p><p>&#8220;Trust me, I&#8217;m just very happy now. I&#8217;m very motivated to go through this season. I don&#8217;t like to say I&#8217;m going to do this or that, but one thing I can tell you: I will do a lot better than I did last year. Let&#8217;s talk in October and you will see.&#8221;</p><p>&#8226;&#8226;&#8226;</p><p>Jos&#233; Guillen provided a steady stream of drama for the Royals his first season. He called some teammates &#8220;babies,&#8221; said &#8220;(bleep) the fans,&#8221; was booed often, had to be restrained from approaching a heckler, feuded with his manager and nearly fought the pitching coach.</p><p>Some of that was expected, and privately, a few players even said it was welcome after years of Mike Sweeney&#8217;s hugs-and-smiles style of leadership. At some point, though, it became too much.</p><p>&#8220;That is something I need to get better at,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I get crazy sometimes.&#8221;</p><p>Guillen has a huge number of friends throughout the game, and he has made more in Kansas City. He and Alex Gordon, in particular, have a strong bond and mutual respect.</p><p>Coco Crisp played through all the Manny-being-Manny drama in Boston, and he swears that he never thought it was a distraction. Zack Greinke, though, says there were times last year when players&#8217; focus was averted from the field, and that it could have impacted their performance.</p><p>Guillen and manager Trey Hillman say their relationship is good now. Each side accepts partial responsibility.</p><p>Beyond all that, though, there is the very real question of whether Guillen made the Royals a better team last year. The advanced metrics aren&#8217;t kind. Any number of them conclude that Guillen&#8217;s limited range in the outfield and low on-base percentage negated his power and run production, giving him the equivalent value of an average major-leaguer.