Royals have a history of coming up short at shortstop
By SAM MELLINGER
The Kansas City Star
Mike Aviles is The Guy right now. Can’t call him The Man, not yet — and not with the decade of history working against him.
Aviles is the current shortstop hope for the Royals, who just might’ve pulled a baseball first by starting four different shortstops in four consecutive games recently.
Oh, there is no shortage of reasons the Royals have been mostly bad the last decade and beyond. You can go on-field (no power) or off (money), but the shortstop position might be the timeliest and most obvious.
Especially with how the Royals plan to build with pitching and defense.
“It has to improve,” general manager Dayton Moore says. “We recognize that. It’s a position that’s very important and vital to the success of our organization.”
You can hide weakness at other positions. Bad arms go to second base, bad range goes to first base. Shortstops need to be the whole package, and in today’s game, they also need to hit.
Tony Peña Jr. is the only “plus” defensive shortstop the Royals have, but he’s also checking in with a .368 OPS that would rank 28th among National League pitchers with at least 25 plate appearances.
Esteban German (who hasn’t been much better than Peña offensively) and Alberto Callaspo have defensive limitations at shortstop, which leaves Aviles — a 27-year-old rookie.
In 10 games, he’s hitting .361 with power, including a four-for-five night Saturday with his second homer. He also made his second error, but has made the routine plays and at least one highlight-worthy double play.
The question is whether he can keep it up. Keep in mind Peña smacked four triples in his first eight games as a Royal in 2007 before cooling off.
It is not a coincidence that the Royals’ only winning season in the last 10 is also the only season their shortstop was above the league average.
“You can’t get along without it,” says Gary Hughes, an executive with the Cubs. “The thing that would be out of the ordinary is if you didn’t have a good shortstop and you had a good team.”
•••
Roll call of the past decade’s Royals shortstops is a depressing list, so let’s just get it over with:
Angel Berroa, Neifi Perez, Rey Sanchez, Felix Martinez and Mendy Lopez. Andres Blanco, Desi Relaford, Ray Holbert, Shane Halter and Luis Rivera also received extended looks.
Berroa is the crown jewel of the franchise’s shortstop struggles, of course. He came in the Johnny Damon trade after the 2000 season, with then-GM Allard Baird saying the deal would ultimately be judged on how Berroa turned out.
What makes it worse is that this is the same span in which the rest of baseball found corner-outfield production from shortstops. Miguel Tejada drove in 150 runs one year. Alex Rodriguez smashed 57 homers. Nomar Garciaparra twice led the league in hitting.
That trend is fading somewhat, but we still have reigning NL MVP Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies, the Marlins’ Hanley Ramirez and the Yankees’ Derek Jeter, among others.
“That’s what you want, the complete player,” Moore says. “Those guys, you can’t just shake them off trees.”
Berroa is gone from the Royals now, traded to the Dodgers for a switch-hitting, 21-year-old shortstop prospect named Juan Rivera, for whom the team has high hopes.
Even with Berroa gone, his rapid decline from 2003 AL Rookie of the Year to Omaha left a gaping hole with the organization’s shortstop supply. Rookies of the Year are supposed to bring stability, so when Berroa fell off, it created a weakness the Royals weren’t ready for.
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