Rejoice! Mike Jacobs and John Bale Released

That folks is a beautiful headline and it’s not a misprint.  Just before the onset of this morning’s Rule 5 draft the Kansas City Royals released Mike Jacobs and John Bale.  I mentioned in my morning article that I was going to provide more thoughts on these two former Royals.

I thought about it all day today and I came to the conclusion that providing thoughts on Bale and Jacobs would be kind of a waste of space.  I’m exhausted.  I have to drive to Chillicothe in the morning.  And what is there left to say about these two?  Brevity has never been one of my strengths, but I’m going to try and keep my thoughts on Mike and John brief.

Mike Jacobs was set up to fail from day one, because Dayton Moore acquired him to be something he wasn’t capable of being.  That’s not his fault and I am sure he tried his best while pocketing a cool $3.275 million in 2009.  He is indirectly responsible for Leo Nunez spending 2009 as a member of the Marlins.  Jacobs is also responsible for my general distrust of the UZR/150 statistic.  The numbers say he is a better 1B than Billy Butler, but my eyes say something completely different.  Even the defensively handicapped Royals realized Butler was less of a liability at the position than Jacobs just a few weeks into the season.  I know it was just one year of data and a stat like UZR/150 needs more of a sample size to paint a picture but Mike’s 5.5 UZR/150 to Billy’s -7.4 makes me shake my head.  This is already more than I planned to say, but I will end by saying that trading Leo Nunez for Jacobs was not the colossal blunder that some folks are making it out to be.  I wouldn’t have made the trade, but all Dayton really did was trade a slightly above ML average reliever who has a violent delivery and weighs 160 lbs for a player with some solid pop in his bat, though he is lacking in all other areas.  I wouldn’t have made the trade, but I understand.

John Bale was kind of effective in 2007 and 2008 when he wasn’t hurt.  In 2009 he was simply dreadful.  He made $5.2 million “pitching” for the Royals over three seasons.  His time in the organization had clearly come to an end.  I applaud him for his resiliency to keep fighting back from a variety of injuries and ailments, and it says a lot about his character that he went to pitch in Japan in an attempt to get back into MLB.  The Royals gave him a chance, and I’m sure he did his best.  Bale seems like a good guy who has had to fight for his place in baseball.  I respect that, and I hope another major league team gives him a chance to pitch in their 2010 bullpen.  At the same time, I’m glad the Royals are moving on.

That wasn’t so short after all …

Before I take my leave for the night, I wanted to take a moment to welcome our new Red Sox blogger to the FanSided.com MLB team.  B-Dogg is now up and running over at BoSox Injection, so feel free to check it out.

(Wally Fish is Kings of Kauffman’s lead blogger.  Subscribe to his RSS feed and add him on Twitter to follow him daily.)