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Buster Posey is good. Real good. Real good especially because he plays a position that doesn’t often lend itself to offensive production, which just so happens to be what ol’ Buster does best.

Bengie Molina, well, he’s not so good. He’s old, slow, doesn’t throw all that well anymore, doesn’t hit all that well anymore (ignore the batting average for a moment and get with the new century), and the last time he saw a pitch he didn’t feel fit to swing at was when little brother Yadier was throwing to him in the backyard.

Molina also makes $5 million this year. Posey? Let’s just say he’s slightly under that.

The paying, and subsequently playing, of an older, unproductive, and expensive player is the thing that can show the ineptness of an organization quicker than anything else. The defending of such moves because of those pesky little things unseen (he’s a leader!)shows the real ignorance of generations past in how they view baseball and how they choose to construct a roster. It’s sad really.

Teams all over baseball do this. Well, not necessarily the winning teams. Funny how that works out.

The Royals do it. They signed and continue to play Scott Podsednik even though his already empty batting average is proven to be more the byproduct of an unreal, unsustainable, start to the season, rather than his talent.

The Cubs are doing it because they signed Bob Howry instead of bringing up either Jay Jackson or Andrew Cashner.

The Astros do it, although by not really blocking a well-known prospect, by electing to pay Pedro Feliz to play perfectly average defense and little else.

The Royals do it. (See a pattern with this franchise?) They signed Rick Ankiel which meant pushing a younger, better, cheaper player in Mitch Maier to the bench before Ankiel got hurt. Thankfully.

Why do teams do this? It must be something in the comfort of the name. Organizations that are strapped for money, or organizations that constantly lose, must feel like they can’t afford to not sign these guys. I mean, they’re names. Some are relatively big names. Not big names like Pujols, or A-Rod, or Mauer mind you, but big enough names that the fans know who they are. And thus, the organization knows who they are.

So I suppose that’s it. It’s the fear of the unknown in the young players. I would contest the fear shouldn’t be in the “what if Buster Posey doesn’t perform?” camp, but rather the “what if Bengie Molina performs exactly how he’s proven he’s going to?” camp.

The numbers can be pretty.

Molina hit 20 homeruns last year and drove in 80. He’s good!

Feliz had 82 RBI last year. What other third baseman on the market will give us that kind of production? He’s good!

Rick Ankiel used to be a pitcher. Now, he’s an outfielder! He’s good!

However each of these players when put in the correct context should only be seen as struggling to be average and nothing more. Unfortunately for the teams that employ them though, they are not paid like average players.

Molina has a .323 wOBA (an average wOBA is about .340) which would be a perfectly acceptable number from a catcher if he were making say, what Posey would be making, league minimum.

Feliz has a .548 OPS so far this year. .548! Let’s pause for a moment to let that number sink in. That’s bad. That’s phenomenally bad. It’s so bad in fact that the Astros are willingly paying him $4.5 million this season. Well, you say, that’s because he had a good year last year and they’re paying on past performance. Okay. Last season, Feliz had a .694 OPS. Yeah, that’s really bad too.

For some teams, and I suppose the Giants would consider themselves in this category, keeping a player down to hold back his service time which means delaying arbitration is a big issue. It could mean the difference between 2, 3, maybe even as much as 5 million dollars a few years down the round. That’s quite a lot of money that could be used on other good players to surround someone like Posey in a couple of years.

Then again, if Posey is the player everyone thinks he is, or at least the hitter everyone thinks he is, the difference between the playoffs and not for a franchise like San Francisco means a heck of a lot more than the possibility of $5 million three years from now.

‘Til next time.

So the MLBPA is considering filing a grievance against the owners for possible collusion stemming from the lack of reckless spending during the “post-2009 free agent market.”

The only reaction I have to this is the same one Charlie Donovan had towards Rachel Phelps when she told him to sit down.

It makes perfect sense for the players union to do all they can to make sure their clients are getting all – and them some – according to what the market dictates. That is the creed all unions are charged with. They are to make sure things are always done in the workers best interest. Only in this case, it has little to do with the economy, and more to do with baseball people slowly understanding how baseball actually works.

Before Moneyball – yes, the M word – teams were largely stuck in neutral with regards to how they evaluated players. It was all about what you saw.

This guy’s fast.

This guy’s got great power.

Boy the ball really jumps off his bat.

And my favorite, he really plays the game the “right way,” as if there is any skill called the “right way”.

All, I suppose, perfectly fine ways of looking at baseball if you were content with walking around with your head in the sand and thinking the world is flat. But as technology evolved, our understanding of certain mathematical factors evolved, and player trends stayed the same, very smart people started to see patterns and thought to themselves: what does this all mean?

Great evolvements in human history come from curios minds. The exploiting of market inefficiencies in baseball is one of them.

All Moneyball set out to prove was that certain skills, mainly the skill of getting on base, were undervalued in the market because it wasn’t a clearly seen ability. At least, not one if you never bothered to think about it objectively. Getting on base is the most important offensive skill in baseball because the game is governed by outs, not by runs, and the fewer outs you make the more runs you create. It’s simple.

But for decades baseball organizations were routinely run by those that were “brought up with the game,” which is a fancy way of saying they never got outside their bubble to learn from a more objective view point.

And within that bubble of subjectivity lies the problem. It was incurious people learning from incurious people – a breeding ground for unoriginal thought and devolvement. It was the reason then, and still is today, that baseball is the most poorly run business in the country. Players of little to no value are paid more than players of actual productive value, because there are still those that believe baseball is entirely in what you see, and not what has been proven.

Take the Kansas City Royals for instance.

This last off-season the GM Dayton Moore signed Rick Ankiel, Scott Podsednik, and Jason Kendall, all while having players already on the roster that would provide equal to, or more value, for a fraction of the cost.

Kendall was given a 2 year, $6-million deal even though he’s an atrocious hitter, has overrated on base skills (his stats largely reflect hitting in front of the pitcher in the National League) and is 36 years old. The deal was justified because he calls a great game (an extremely overrated, and subjective, skill), knows how to handle a pitching staff (another extremely overrated, and subjective, skill), and is a “winner.”

Now we can argue the merits of those traits and whether or not they actually mean anything or have anything to do with a team win, but what cannot be argued is those (presumed) traits Kendall brings to the table are not enough of a positive difference when compared to Brayan Pena’s actual talent, to justify the extra $5+ million the Royals are spending.

In any other business in the United States personnel is paid based on what they are producing not what they might produce, or could produce, or someone, somewhere, thinks they can produce. Kendall has been a below average Major League player for more than three years now. There is no reason to conclude he should warrant money the “market dictates.” His value is minimal; he should be paid, minimally.

The players union may claim collusion because money isn’t being thrown around as wildly as it used to be, but I think – I hope – that’s done more because they have to and not because they think it’s true.

Baseball is getting smarter, not cheaper. Team executives understand more the true value of players around the evolvement of statistics, and are dolling out their money more according to what they prove and not according to what they think. Baseball is starting to act more like a responsible business.

The union should be glad they still have the Royals.

A few days ago Top 10 Kansas City Royals prospect Danny Duffy decided he was going to leave professional baseball. After having an outside shot at being a part of this year’s pitching staff either to start the season or almost certainly during, an injury caused a delay to his big league dreams. Well, maybe they weren’t his dreams after all.

I’m sure in the next couple of weeks, and months, we’ll begin to hear about the circumstances that led to Duffy to leave pro baseball*. I’m sure in the next couple of days, and months, we’ll begin to hear, even though we’ve already started to hear some, about how he’s a quitter and how he’s throwing away a tremendous opportunity, or how he’s a myriad of derogatory adjectives. I’d like to caution all of us to not get caught up in the world of nonsense that is sports blogger rage.

*Since Duffy, there have been two other Royals minor leaguers have decided to leave the organization. They won’t be last. They won’t be the last in all of professional baseball this year.

All we know, all we need to know, is that a young man has decided that at this time in his life, baseball is not for him. For whatever reason. We can only begin to speculate why or what, but doing so would be irresponsible. We’ll find out soon enough. Someone will talk to someone, who will talk to someone, and we’ll have our “answers.” As if we needed some anyway. Unfortunately until then, Duffy is going to be chastised for somehow being less of a man.

I grew up in Kansas City and spent all of my adult life to this point living there and being saturated with all things Royals. I remember the day it came out that franchise savior Zack Greinke was taking his leave of absence from baseball and how everyone had their thoughts on the matter. There was the name calling, the questions of how tough he was – cause you know, the one thing Sport is good at is making a man less of one if for some reason his sport isn’t everything that matters to him – and the confusion over how someone could pass up this “opportunity.”

Sadly fans and journalists alike got lost in the fact that this wasn’t their life, it was Greinke’s. Well this isn’t our life either, it is Duffy’s. It’s all of these players’ lives.

The juvenile name calling, the questioning of his toughness, the calling him a “quitter” is irresponsible. The young man made a choice. Nothing more. He decided that at this point, baseball wasn’t for him, and that’s fine. Perfectly fine. That does not make him a quitter, that makes him just like everyone else who ever worked at a job they didn’t like and wanted to try something different. Just because it’s baseball, doesn’t mean it’s not a job.

Sometimes we lose touch with reality when it comes to professional athletes. We expect all of them to have this unshakable drive, this unrelenting desire, and this ultimate love for the game the way we do. Well, not all of them do.

Some pro athletes play because they can, and for no other reason. They don’t play because they love their sport, they play because they’re better at it than you or me, and well, they might as well. And that’s perfectly fine.

Bit when that fine line of admiration is crossed into the ugly world of jealous, it’s not fair. Just because Duffy – or any player choosing to leave the fame and do something different with their lives – has left doesn’t mean he quit. It just means it’s not want he wanted. It’s not his fault it may have been what others wanted.