In Defense Of A Fine Meche

The Gil Meche Defense Club meeting (held last month in the backseat of a Mini Cooper) has not added many members over the last few months. I must admit this surprises me. Sure, at first, when the Royals signed pitcher Gil Meche for the preposterous-sounding five years and $55 million, there was outrage and disbelief and mockery. Anyone could understand that. That’s a shocking amount of money. And Meche is not often mistaken for Pedro.

Over time, though, I expected some of that outrage to dissipate. This off-season was filled with all sorts of crazy deals. The Texas Rangers signed a similarly flawed Vincente Padilla to even more money per year (well, Padilla’s and Meche’s flaws are not actually similar, but they’ve both got 'em). Jeff Suppan, Miguel Batista and Ted Lilly signed big contracts though nobody's clearing shelf space for the Cy Young awards. Jason Marquis got $7 million per year for three even though he’s coming off a historically bad season. And Barry Zito got the richest pitching contract in baseball history – a seven-year, $126 million albatross – though I cannot find a single person who believes he will be worth it. The BEST I’ve heard from scouts is that Zito “might have a couple of good years.”

So I just assumed that as these deals registered in everybody’s mind, the Gil Meche deal would, at the very least, fade into the background the way another tacky hotel blends into the Las Vegas landscape. But no. As far as I can tell, even now the Gil Meche signing stands alone as the howler of the off-season, the one indefensible signing, the tackiest hotel in Vegas. My good friends and fellow Royals observers Rob Neyer and Rany Jazayerli have spent the entire winter arguing about the Meche move, with Rany saying it was merely disastrous while Rob believes it to be apocalyptic. It reminded me of a famous “Pro-Con” column debate in the Louisville Courier-Journal concerning the merits of horse trainer D. Wayne Lukas. The columns were so biting on both sides that it left a crumbled Lukas to ask: “Which one was supposed to the ‘Pro?’”

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OK, so now I’m going to lay out why I think the Gil Meche signing was not only defensible but practically mandatory for the Royals. In this defense, I’m not actually going to talk much about Meche’s potential to develop into a good pitcher. I do think that potential is there – he’s a former No. 1 pick with ace’s stuff, pretty good makeup and he’s only 28 years old. About half of his Baseball Reference comps either became quite good (Chris Carpenter, Jason Schmidt, Todd Stottlemeyer) or still have the potential to do so (Jason Jennings, Matt Clement). People will point out that that there are plenty of 28-year olds like Gil Meche who are now working as loan officers, and that might be right too. We’ll wait and see.

No, here I want to talk about specifically about the Kansas City Royals and how they go about digging out of their crater. The Royals are a bad team. This goes without saying. The only way to go from being a tragically bad team to a reasonably good team is to get better players. Again, goes without saying. But how do you get better players – or specifically, how could the Royals go about getting an above-average Major League pitcher?

Four ways come to mind. I may be missing one or two. The Royals could:
1. Trade for a good, established pitcher.
2. Draft/sign/trade for a young talent and develop him into a good pitcher.
3. Sign or trade for a talented pitcher off the scrap heap who has generally underachieved or been hurt and then hope he harnesses his skills for at least a little while (i.e. get lucky with someone like Chris Carpenter or Esteban Loiaza or someone similar).
4. Sign a big-money pitcher, either in free agency, from Japan or from Latin America.

OK. Where does this leave the Royals?

(1) They really don’t have anything they can trade for a good pitcher unless they want to deal one of the few good young players they have. That, of course, would only make matters worse.

(2) New general manager Dayton Moore does intend to draft, sign and trade for as many young pitchers as he can find – this is the core of his rebuilding plan – but it will take years if it works at all. The Royals don’t have a single major league ready prospect and only three (Luke Hochevar, Tyler Lumsden and Billy Buckner – four if you still count Zack Greinke) who are even CLOSE to ready. The way pitchers get hurt and flop (especially in the Kansas City system), three reasonably close pitching prospects is hardly something you can count on.

(3) Trolling through the trash bins for a pitcher has been a big Royals’ focus the last few years. They actually had some success – they did find Paul Byrd and Jeff Suppan – but they also had lots of failures. The search continues. Luke Hudson, picked off the Cincinnati scrap heap, is the Royals No. 3 pitcher and he does have talent. Underachiever Jorge de la Rosa was acquired by Moore, and they have hopes for him too. The Royals have to search under every rock, but that hardly seems away to win a pennant.

That leaves Option (4) – signing a big money pitcher. But again, remember, these are the Royals. You know they can’t compete for the really high priced pitchers. Even if they could match the money -- which they probably could not -- the best pitchers are not going to Kansas City right now. The Royals knew they could not sign Barry Zito no matter how much money they offered (they did call his agent, who basically concurred). Same goes with Jason Schmidt. The Royals know right now they almost certainly won’t be a player in the Zambrano and Jennings sweepstakes next year, and they’re not going to sign Johan Santana when he’s a free agent. They can’t outbid the Red Sox or Yankees for the best pitcher out of Japan, and they get outbid for the surest guys in Latin America. These are hard realities.

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So what to do? The Royals need pitching more than any team in baseball. So they looked hard at the free agent pitching class this year. They were ready to make offers to several of the second-tier guys like Suppan, Batista, Lilly and possibly Padilla.

Most of all, they wanted Gil Meche.

Why Meche? There are a lot of reasons why. The Royals scouts unanimously loved his stuff. The Royals SSGOR (Secret Stats Guy On Retainer) put Meche at the top of his free agent list (possibly because of his age, his improved strikeout numbers and the fact that he has allowed fewer hits than innings pitched in his career). The players GM Dayton Moore and others interviewed – some of them Royals, some of them former Meche teammates – had good things to say about the guy. "Sign him," the Royals veterans begged. And Moore himself liked Meche. He thinks the guy has a chance to emerge.

So that's the background. In the big meeting held as the off-season began, the Royals brain trust sat around a table and unanimously decided that among the pitchers they had a reasonable chance of signing, Meche was their No. 1 choice. They figure he’s already a decent pitcher, and he has upside. If given the chance, they would go for it.

Of course, at that time Moore had no real way of knowing if Meche would consider coming to Kansas City. Sure, NOW some general managers bad-mouth the Royals for this signing, but the truth is that when the off-season began Gil Meche drew lots of interest. The Royals made their pitch, and they perceived from the talks that did have a shot at getting Meche. The meeting went well. Everything felt right. Moore went to Royals ownership and said “I think we have a shot at this guy.” Ownership -- and this was a big deal in Kansas City -- said: “Go for it.”

Then finally it was crunch time. We know that a couple of teams offered Meche four years, $40 million. But as the final meeting approached, the Royals heard solid rumors that one team actually offered Meche four years at $48 million. They are still adamant that a $12 million per year deal was on the table and it was very real. So the Royals knew it would take a very special offer to get Meche to come to Kansas City. And they did something the Royals absolutely have to do in these circumstances. They went for it. They saw a guy, they studied him, they liked him, they went after him. The Royals offered Meche an extra year. They figured, hey, the guy’s only 28 ... giving him the extra year is a risk they were willing to take.

Dayton Moore says when it comes to trades, drafts, signings of all sizes, there is only one key:

GET … THE … PLAYER.

I agree with him.

They offered five years, $55 million. They got their man. And the “Royals are morons” commentary began about 12 seconds later.

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Now, will it be a great signing, good signing, a bad signing, a tragic signing? My friend, Bob Dutton, the beat writer for The Kansas City Star, suggests that 60 victories is a good cutoff point – if Meche gets more than 60 victories in five years, then it was a good signing at least. If he gets fewer, for whatever reason, it was not so good. I think that’s fair enough. But I think there are other things to consider. Does he have one or two great years in there? Does he match-up with other teams aces and hold his own? Does he snap some losing streaks and keep some winning streaks going? Or does he go backward, crumble under the money pressure, get hurt? There is a lot involved here.

But in the end, Moore probably summed up this whole signing with a simple question. He asked: “Are the Royals a better team with Gil Meche or without him?” There’s really no doubt. If the Royals had not given Meche the extra year, some other team would have signed Meche for a lot of money. That team may have been ridiculed the way the Royals have been. And they may not have. Either way, the Royals Top 2 starters going into the season would have been Odalis Perez and Luke Hudson.