Bullpens are but one facet of a big-league baseball team, but in the contemporary version of baseball, no area of a club is under a bigger microscope.

The Royals are 4-5 on the season. It's not hard to imagine that record being 8-1, at least in a perfect world where the skies are always blue and Jack's Stack is served at The K. The Royals have had the lead at some point in four of their five losses. In three of them, they had leads of two runs or more and in all three of those games, they lost the lead in the seventh inning or later.

The Royals' leaky bullpen has undermined a not-horrible start for the offense, which leads the American League in batting average. There a lot of Fool's Gold in those offensive numbers--another topic--but, nevertheless, KC is fourth in the league in runs per game. The rotation has also been solid, posting a middle-of-the-pack, fielding-independent ERA despite the terrible outing posted by the ailing Gil Meche. (I don't have any special insight into Meche's physical condition, but if something isn't wrong with his arm, then something is wrong with his approach.) The defense has been terrible--again, another topic--but the point here is this: With a good showing by the relief staff, the Royals could have created a positive buzz in their home ballpark by now.

In the past, Royals general manager Dayton Moore has shared with me his philosophy in building a bullpen. Think of the middle relief staff as one pitcher. He tries to construct a group of players that combine to be the most complete pitcher one can imagine. It throws with both hands. It has power stuff, but also the ability to change speeds. It misses bats but also pitches to contact. It can keep the ball in the air in a spacious stadium, but induce a groundball when one is called for. It throws every pitch in the book. The middlemen provide the manager with every option there is to bridge the game between starter and closer.

I'm not exactly sure how the makeup of the current staff fits that philosophy. I'm not sure the staff fits any philosophy. Some of that is bad luck. Some of that is poor planning. The end result is a complete muddle. Other than closer Joakim Soria, there is not one relief pitcher on the staff that has successfully filled any type of bullpen role. Most of the explanation of that is poor performance. Part of it is mismanagement. Still another piece of the puzzle is an apparent disconnect between the way manager Trey Hillman deploys his bullpen from the way Moore constructs it.

Consider the differences in bullpen management between Hillman and Braves manager Bobby Cox, whom Moore surely sees as the model big-league skipper after his own long career working in Atlanta's organization. Last season, Hillman was near the bottom of the major leagues in using relievers on consecutive days, while no manager used relievers in back-to-back situations more often than Cox. Just two managers had fewer overall relief appearances than Hillman because of his distaste for specialization in the pen. Just four teams averaged longer relief outings than KC's 1.12 innings per appearance; just three teams had shorter outings than the 0.97 inn/app. figure posted by the Braves. The Royals' figure was high despite the fact that only the Nationals had a worse team bullpen ERA.

In a baseball philosophy sense, there really isn't a right or wrong in whether a manager relies on one-inning relievers or swaps pitchers according to matchups. There are plenty of successful bullpens on both sides of the ledger. In the Royals' case, we know something is wrong. Either the wrong pitchers are on the roster, the pitchers on the roster are being used incorrectly or, most likely, it's a little of both. It's easy to say Hillman should have anointed pitchers for specific roles in the spring and stuck to it, but if the relievers aren't succeeding in those roles, you have to be ready to adjust.

That brings us to Luis Mendoza. Two days before the end of spring training, Moore plucked Mendoza from the Rangers for a little cash. Mendoza wasn't going to make Texas' roster and is out of options, so the Royals grabbed him before he hit the waiver wire. Mendoza's case illustrates perfectly the Royals' tendency to overvalue the opinions of their scouts against the indisputable facts found on the stats sheet.

Mendoza's got a live arm. He throws in the lower- to mid- 90s and has a nice sinker. He was Texas' 24th-ranked prospect by Baseball America in 2008. The publication cited his "rubber arm and durable frame" but also said he is "very reliant on strong infield defense" and that his "ceiling is limited." He entered the season with a career 8.32 ERA in big-league 83.1 innings to go with his 4.58 ERA in eight minor-league seasons. He strikes out barely one batter every other inning. Despite being a sinker specialist, his groundball-to-flyball ratios are barely adequate and he's given up too many home runs. But he's got that live arm, so the Royals were willing to take a flier. He made the Opening Day roster.

On April 8, the third game of the season and just five days after he first stepped foot in the Royals clubhouse, Hillman inserted Mendoza in the eighth inning to protect a one-run lead. At the time, all of Hillman's relievers were more or less available, though Soria had thrown to six batters the day before. Mendoza allowed five runs. Somehow, despite Mendoza's track record of ineffectiveness, Hillman had become convinced that he was the guy to bridge the gap to Soria. Two days later, Mendoza entered a close game against Boston and gave up three runs--and two homers--in five batters faced, turning the contest into a rout.

When faced with bullpen dilemmas, the managers usually opt for veterans first, but whatever. There is no denying the fact that no matter which bullpen lever Hillman pulls right now, it's probably going to be the wrong one. There are no right answers outside of Joakim Soria. At the same time, it's hard to review his use of Mendoza in high-leverage spots and come away believing that he's valuing the right things. Mendoza has an ERA of 24.00, but just two Royals relievers have faced more batters. Mendoza has faced three more batters than Soria.

Hillman needs to become more adept at matching relievers with situations. He needs to be more willing to use multiple relievers to get through an inning, giving his bullpen management style the LaRussa treatment, so to speak. Meanwhile, Moore needs to keep shuffling. Middle relievers are the chattel of the baseball world. There are plenty of them around but few of them are reliable. Mendoza fails? Send him out. Blake Wood had an excellent spring, let's see what he can do. This is also exactly why giving expensive, multi-year deals to middle relievers is almost always a bad idea. Doing so last year has further hamstrung Hillman because he now must continue to hope against hope that Kyle Farnsworth and Juan Cruz will emerge as the bridge guys they were signed to be.

During Moore's first two seasons in Kansas City, when Buddy Bell was still managing, he did a pretty solid job of piecing together bullpens. He also seemed to understand the fungible nature of relievers when he traded away Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez, though the return on both has turned out to be less than ideal. Still, he's shown a knack for crafting a relief staff in the past, so there is hope he can do it again once the team finally pulls the plug on last year's mistakes. However, if Moore can rebuild a bullpen according to the philosophy he has espoused in the past, Hillman still must demonstrate the ability to manage it.

Even if the "ifs and whens" of the bullpen scenario are smoothed over, that doesn't do anything for the short term. The Royals have already missed a chance to get off to a great start in a division that looked mediocre entering the season and remains thus, with the exception being the Twins, who look like a team capable of running away with things. The Royals could be sitting on a great start, rather than a not-as-terrible-as-we-thought start. The buzz at Kauffman Stadium could be one of excited anticipation, rather than the old familiar hum of nervous dread.

The Royals can win the American League Central this season, and I have the numbers to back up that bold statement. No, I'm not crazy. It's Opening Day and I just feel like I should start things out on a positive note. I'll just point out that if you parse my words carefully, you'll note that I said "can" and not "will."

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Spring training results are notoriously misleading, both to fans and the teams themselves. Too often we get caught up in a .450 average from some non-roster invitee compiled against a bunch of pitchers that will be playing in the International League a month from now. Teams celebrate Cactus League championships, yet study after study has shown there is no correlation between spring success and regular season success. The same holds true for seemingly disastrous results.

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Hard to believe that a week from today will be Opening Day for baseball fans across the land. The Royals will be packing up in Surprise, Ariz., over the next couple of days, then head north for the last couple of exhibitions and then the regular season. You'd hope by now that the Royals' roster would be locked in, but there actually seem to be some lingering questions about which 25 players will break camp with the big club.

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In the end, it's difficult to say that the Missouri Tigers either exceeded or fell short of preseason expectations. With DeMarre Carroll, Matt Lawrence and Leo Lyons all graduating, the consensus was that Missouri would win fewer games, finish seventh in the Big 12 and squeeze into the NCAA Tournament as the last tourney team in a strong conference.

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After five days of hoops hysteria, the NAIA Division I Men are down to their version of the Final Four. If you haven't made it out to Municipal Auditorium yet, do yourself a favor. If you're a die-hard basketball fan, you might regret sitting it out, because you never know who or what you might miss.

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If you're one of those college basketball fans that only pays casual attention to the season until those four magical days when March Madness is at its height, you might be a little misinformed. You look at the bracket and see names like Siena and Northern Iowa and you say, in the parlance of Dick Vitale, "Cupcake City, baby!!!" Likewise, you see the names of perpetual contenders like Texas, Michigan State and Louisville and you start pushing them through the bracket in your office pool.

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Turns out Missouri ran out of time before it could play itself completely out of the NCAA Tournament. Now Mike Anderson has four days to right the ship before the Tigers take on a very tough Clemson squad in Buffalo, N.Y.

Make no mistake--the Tigers are lucky to be in the Big Dance. Missouri reaped the rewards from playing in the nation's toughest conference. Finishing fifth and going 10-6 in the Big 12 made it impossible for the selection committee to leave out Missouri, especially in lieu of better options.

Depending on where you look, Missouri finished No. 44 in the RPI rankings, a spot that is always tenuous for tournament hopefuls. The only at-large teams with a worse RPI were Marquette, Notre Dame, Florida and Minnesota, a list of teams that hints at the inherent bias of the selection committee towards the power conferences. Among the victims of this bias was Wichita State, which was No. 43 in RPI and advanced to the championship game of the Missouri Valley Tournament.

Ah, but RPI is not the sole criteria used by the committee. True that. The problem is that the rest of Missouri's resume looks even worse. The Tigers went a startling 1-7 in games against teams ranked in the Top 25 of the RPI. They went 5-0 against teams 26 to 100, but the lack of high-quality wins given so many opportunities is troubling. The Tigers went 7-5 down the stretch and that doesn't even include the black-and-gold egg they laid last week in Kansas City against Nebraska. Also, Missouri's best road win was at Texas Tech--an NIT invitee. Not exactly the most convincing case for the NCAAs.

By contrast, Wichita State went 1-3 against Top 25 teams. Not great, but better than Missouri. The Shockers also went 8-2 against teams 26 to 100. Wichita State was 7-5 down the stretch, but added two wins in the MVC tourney. And Wichita State doesn't even have the best case of the teams left out. That'd arguably be William & Mary. At the same time, Missouri wasn't the worst at-large selection. That'd be Florida. However, a lot of those mid-major teams in Missouri's RPI range put up resumes very similar to Wichita State's fair-but-unconvincing record.

That, as much as anything, is what got the Tigers into the NCAA Tournament. The point isn't that Missouri isn't one of the 65 best teams in the country. It is. It's that based on some of the most inconsistent results of any team in the country, Missouri was just lucky the competition was tepid.

The Valley ended up as a one-bid league and that entrant, Northern Iowa, was under-seeded. The MVC was the ninth-best conference in the country statistically, ranking just a shade beneath the worst of the power conferences, the Pac-10. The Panthers ended up as a tough No. 9 seed, a fact that could loom large for Kansas fans. It'll be a KU-friendly crowd in Oklahoma City, but UNI is an uncommonly difficult second-round opponent for a team given the top overall seed in the tournament.

This assumes, of course, that the Panthers beat UNLV in the first round. That's not a given, but my numbers give UNI a 52.5 percent chance of winning. The teams are fairly similar in that they are both very good defensively but more middling on the offensive end of the court. UNI is more extreme in that regard. The Panthers ranked 13th in the nation in points per possession allowed. The numbers point toward UNI being the favorite and, on top of that, the Panthers were the nation's ninth-most consistent team--a good thing for a squad that went 28-4. So the odds of UNI coming out flat on Thursday are long.

As for Missouri, the Tigers were in one sense under-seeded if you look at their overall power ranking indicators, but the recent trend makes a 10-seed appropriate. Clemson was also under-seeded as a seven, but those Tigers also limped down the stretch and lost to a clear underdog in the first round of its conference tournament. The profile of these teams is remarkably similar. In per-possession stats, Mizzou ranks 50th on offense and 12th on defense. Clemson is at 47th on offense and 10th on defense. You can't get much closer than that.

However, if you drill down further from there, you see some stylistic differences that could loom large on Friday afternoon. Missouri's entire operation hinges on two things: forcing turnovers and taking care of the ball. Clemson (8th) actually ranks near Missouri (3rd) in forced turnover percentage. However, whereas Missouri ranks 50th in avoiding miscues, Clemson ranks a lowly 218th. So in the battle of extra possessions, Missouri should be able to forge a marked advantage. Clemson does have an advantage on the boards--almost any team Missouri faces from here on out is going to have an edge on the glass. However, that edge isn't nearly as acute as Missouri has faced against the top teams in its own conference.

The teams are about equal in categories like shooting accuracy, drawing fouls, shot selection and ball movement. So the battle for extra possessions may be the deciding factor. When you put it all into the computer, the projection is darn near a coin flip. The Missouri-Clemson game projects as one of the tightest of the 32 first-round games. My gut feeling is that Missouri's pressure is going to be enough to get them into the second round.

After that, however, Mizzou will come up against West Virginia. Bob Huggins' team plays the same kind of in-your-face defense that gave Missouri so much trouble at Kansas State and in both games against Kansas. They are also the nation's second-best offensive rebounding team and do a good job of taking care of the ball. My computer gives Missouri a 40.7 percent chance of knocking off the Mountaineers, but that's probably overstating it. A return trip to the Sweet 16 appears unlikely for the Tigers.

That's all well and good, though. Anderson has already proven that his program is no one-year wonder and, as we've written many times, the number of returning players and a highly-rated recruiting class are signs that even better days lie ahead. Whatever happens this week in Buffalo, it's all gravy, because, after all, Missouri is just lucky to be there.

By BRADFORD DOOLITTLE
SportsRadioKC.com

The fun has started at the Sprint Center. As Big 12 hoops fans pour in and the crowds in and around the Power & Light District swell, we're again be reminded why we wanted the arena built in the first place. The games will be well attended. Fans will be passionate. It's the conference tournament in Kansas City--back where it's meant to be.

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