Will Brayan Pena Become the Next Matt Diaz?

Well, given free tickets, Mr. and Mrs. URF attended yesterday’s win over the Angels.  The win was nothing short of miraculous, considering that Davies held them to one run for five innings and then the pen had to go three innings before Soria came in the game. 

But what struck me was that this is an organization that is in trouble, and seems not to know it. For instance, both dugout suites were EMPTY. I don’t ever remember attending a Royals game where they had failed to rent out both dugout suites. 

The high-dollar Diamond seats? Mostly empty. The crowd itself seemed more interested in walking around the park than paying attention to the games. 

Folks, I believe the bill is coming due for organizational neglect, and if you think this is bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The good news—from my perspective—is that the Royals allowed Brayan Pena to dust off his catcher’s mitt. I’m told that it had become so stiff from disuse that they had to oil it up and tie it around a baseball the night before just so he could catch yesterday. 

For a team that claimed to “want to see what they had” in Pena as a catcher, the Royals have been fairly committed to keeping him riding the bench or DH’ing during these last meaningless weeks of the season.

Which reminded me of another Royal mistake from a few years ago—Matt Diaz. Remember him?

Allard “The Genius” Baird acquired him for next to nothing from Tampa Bay because he was stalled behind the outstanding Tampa outfield. In 2004, Diaz had gone .332/.377/.571 at AAA Durham, with 21 homers and 47 doubles.  He was ready to make a move. 

However, the Royals also had a powerful outfield in 2005: David DeJesus in center, Emil Brown in right, and Terrence “Magellan” Long in left.  Brown, of course, emerged to hit .286/.349/.455 after a horrendous start, and Long went .279/.321/.378. 

Meanwhile, in the first half of the season, Diaz hit .371/.408/.649 at Omaha.  Finally called up in August, Diaz mostly got splinters in his ass on the bench while watching the losingest Royals team ever.

That September stands out to me, remembering Buddy Bell and The Genius stating—seriously—that they just couldn’t find playing time for Diaz in left because Long was a bona fide Gold Glove outfielder. 

Yes, I remember it—and so does Joe Posnanski. Check his blog. 

Diaz eventually got into 34 games and had 89 AB’s, hitting .281/.323/.404. 

It got weirder. 

Deciding that Diaz was blocked at LF and 1B (his second position), The Genius decided that his ultimate value might be as a backup catcher, and sent him to the Arizona Instructional League to learn the position. Diaz was freed from the asylum that is the Royals by a trade that netted us the legendary Ricardo Rodriguez and sent him to Atlanta.

Rodriguez called it quits after posting a 5.40 ERA in High Desert in 2006.

Long didn’t win his Gold Glove. In fact, he was non-tendered by the Royals and played a sum total of 12 more games in the major leagues.

Emil Brown had one more good season for the Royals in 2006, a bad one in 2007, a mediocre one for Oakland in 2008, and has played in three games this year for the Mets.

After shaking off the stink of Kansas City, Diaz has been a very reliable pinch hitter and outfielder for the Braves, averaging about 350 AB’s a year.  His career MLB line to this point is .312/.357/.460 in 1,218 AB’s. 

He had an injury-plagued 2008, only hitting .244/.264/.304 in 135 AB’s, but so far this year (106 games, 309 AB’s), he's hitting .320/.392/.495. 

His platoon splits have ranged from “negligible” to “still not bad.”  This year is his worst against righties, and he’s hitting .269/.358/.414. Oh, and he’s making the princely sum of $1.225 million this year, his first in seven figures.

See, the ones that drive me nuts aren’t the Dye/Beltran/Damon types. We couldn’t afford to keep them. But a Matt Diaz? This organization HAD him and were TOO STUPID to keep him. 

His MLB performance was completely predictable by his minor league stats, and yet, we let him go for some rag arm that’s back in the Dominican now.  All because we couldn’t see what he had because we had to play Magellan Long.

I’m not suggesting that Matt Diaz is/was an All-Star in the making that could have turned this team around. Bearing in mind the transition to the National League and the exposure of playing daily, you’d probably have to adjust his numbers down.  Maybe .290/.350/.450 would be realistic. 

Still, how would you like to have a cheap guy like that in a corner for three of the past four years?  The Royals haven’t taken one big fatal wound during this 25-year slide; it’s been a death of a thousand cuts. Diaz is one such cut.

And perhaps you’re seeing how this little missive is coming full circle. 

As the next candidate for “Diazing,” I present Brayan Pena. Pena has stalled in our organization behind those two powerhouses, Slow John Buck and Miguel Olivo.  Pena’s minor league career numbers are .303/.353/.404.  This year, he’s gotten into 50 games, only 22 of those starting at catcher.  He’s hitting .279/.321/.465. 

Like Diaz, he has good offensive skills for his position.  Like Diaz, he’s willing to draw a walk.  Like Diaz, he has good power (five homers and nine doubles in limited action). Like Diaz, he plays his ass off.

And like Diaz, he’s stalled behind two veteran stiffs who are unlikely to ever have another starting role in anyone else’s uniform. If nothing else pisses you off about this organization, this should. 

The Kansas City Royals are an organization that needs badly to be committed to the development of young players. Yet when they have the opportunity (when all is lost and the vets are mediocre), they consistently give playing time to the vets who have killed the season, rather than the promising player that might help next season. 

Then they trade the promising player because he “hasn’t shown them anything.”

Doesn’t matter whether it’s Trey Hillman or Buddy Bell. You get the same result.  “Why” is a topic for another day and perhaps another commentator. 

But those empty dugout suites bear mute witness to the realities of being a Royals fan:  Not only is there no joy in Mudville, there’s no hope either. 

The only question left is—who gets Pena, and what does he do for them?