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Oh God, is it almost over?  Um,… now batting eighth for some semblance of a Major League Baseball line-up… catcher Benito Santiago.

Sheesh!  Benito Santiago.  Again, this is another one where I’m not sure if I need to write anything.  If you’re an avid reader of this blog, you’ve certainly read all of my hilarious jokes about Benito Santiago.  “The mummified remains of Benito Santiago,” “the ancient Egyptian remains of Benito Santiago,” “Where in the world is Benito Santiago?”, and so on, and so forth.  So, yeah, the guy looked old when he played here.  A lot of that was due to the fact that he was, actually, really, really old when we signed the guy.  That’s right–we willingly obtained a 39-year-old catcher to be our starter.  Guess which year we did that?

Actually, supposing there was one year in particular where the Royals made an unfathomably bad move isn’t exactly the right question to ask.  If it were, we wouldn’t have such a vast and unique sample to choose from for the rest of my Worst Royals Line-Up of the Last 15 Years.  Still, 2004 was an especially awful year.  As I’ve said before, 2003 was such a strange, up year.  It may have been a fluke, but if the organization had handled their following off-season differently (you know, correctly), things could have played out a lot better.  We wouldn’t have been found out as being huge frauds or inept or whatever terms were used to describe the buffoonery that was taking place.

The decision was made in the off-season to make upgrades in order to capitalize and further the success of that 82-78 season (that’s good).  The moves they actually made were horrible and misguided, and caused the team to return to futile ground (that’s bad).

The reason I bring all of this up in my post about Benito “Don’t touch him or he’ll turn into dust” Santiago is because he was seen, for some ridiculous reason, as an upgrade to Brent Mayne.  Although Mayne didn’t light the world on fire, he called a solid game.  He knew how to handle pitchers, and wouldn’t hit under .240 if given regular playing time.  He’d been with a lot of teams throughout this career, but not in a “Jose Guillen, detrimental to the morale of the team” way.  Guys who don’t have star talent but play the game correctly will always find a home, and will be employed until they decide on their own to step away.  Mayne was one of those guys.  Santiago bounced around from team to team because, for some reason, he could still hit.  Despite the ups-and-downs of knee injury and a really nasty car accident, he always bounced back.  He seemed resilient.  With the Royals, however…

When we signed Benito, his strengths were all but gone.  His 39 years of life had taken its toll on the man, and he hit a little (not much), played a little defense (not much), and thankfully, Geoff Geary of the Phillies broke Santiago’s hand flushing out one of his life-support tubes (err, I mean, with a fastball).  Santiago was out the rest of the season, thankfully.

We traded Santiago pretty soon after that to the Pirates for Leo Nunez, who, before he landed on the disabled list this year, was pitching extremely well as Joakim Soria’s set-up guy (which makes me absolutely giddy about our bullpen once Nunez and “Rock’em sock’em” John Bale get back in a week or two.  Soria, Mahay, Ramirez, Nunez, and Bale?  Looks like it’s turkey time for poor ol’ Jimmy G–gobble gobble).  I suppose it’s an okay signing if you think of it as our means in obtaining Nunez, but I don’t want to think like that.  I want to think of it as a crappy, completely unnecessary move.

There was absolutely NO REASON to obtain Santiago–none.  Juan Gonzalez is sort of understandable, because he was actually coming off a decent season.  Santiago was coming off 11 home runs and 56 RBIs as a 38-year-old man.  How many years would the guy have left?  It’s almost like playing Russian Roulette–he could be washed up any second.  The risk was too large to make that kind of deal.  They should have just stayed the course with Mayne.  At least that way, when they made the Beltran trade that was going to happen anyway and landed John Buck, the young catcher could have learned from someone who had been with this young, patchwork staff for a couple of years.  I’d bet money that Buck would be a better player today if he’d have gotten some time with Mayne and not… well, no one.  When Buck came, Santiago was injured.  His replacement, some guy named Kelly Stinnett, got injured a game or two after Benny (Unrelated, Stinnett put up killer numbers on my PS2 version of “Triple Play 99″ for EA Sports–It’s in the game!).  The Royals had to sign some guy named Alberto Castillo and thrust John Buck IMMEDIATELY into the starting line-up, pretty damaging for a guy with NO major league experience who, by all accounts, was nowhere near ready to face Major League pitching.

On another SHOCKING side note, Santiago was one of the first guys named in the Mitchell Report.  Really?!!  No way!!!  The 39-year-old Major League starting catcher was using HGH?!!  I didn’t see it coming (this, by the way, brings our Mitchell Report list to, I believe, 4).  Also, just a week and a half ago, it was revealed that some big-time coke dealer in the Plaza, Jacques Levigne (Avril’s retarded half-cousin eight times removed), gave Santiago $80,000 to buy a car for him.  Awesome.  I’m glad he decided to do that in his brief stay in the city.  I hear Santiago is now running a Bed & Breakfast/Drug Mule Training Ground with Tamarick Vanover and Bam Morris.

Getting back to the reasons behind these just-plain horrendous transactions, I sometimes think David Glass approached free agency based on trips to a now-grown-up grandson’s attic of old baseball cards.  He might walk past Benito Santiago’s 1987 Topps rookie card that reads “Benny Santiago–Future All-Star!” and think, “Hey, Benny Santiago!  He was a pretty good player!  We should sign him if Sandy Alomar, Jr. isn’t available!  I should go call Allard!”  Or maybe he’d see a Beckett from 1998 and see Juan Gonzalez swinging away, chasing Hack Wilson’s RBI recored and think, “Hey, Juan Gonzalez almost broke that RBI record until he came 30 some odd short!  That was only 6 years ago!  We need to sign that guy if we can’t dig up Hack Wilson himself!  I should go call Allard!”  Matt Stairs, Jay Bell, Jeff King, Chili Davis, and so on, and so forth.  I seriously think if he’d put down the old baseball card collection and went on the “series of tubes” to look for players, we’d have been in a better position with our club.  “Hey, this Alex Rodriguez guy seems pretty good.  We should sign that kid!  I should go call Allard!”  That would have worked out a lot better.

The decisions this club has consistently made during the good times have doomed them.  There comes a time to look outside (or down at the minor leagues) in order to upgrade a position, and we’ve bumbled through this for years and years.  There are certain players you keep (Raul Ibanez), certain players you don’t (Neifi Perez), and certain players you chase after, and those players are not Rondell White, Brian Anderson, Darrell May, Juan Gonzalez, Jay Bell, Dean Palmer, and I could go on for days.  I think I could literally go on for 5 hours, but I don’t want to pass out.  Benito Santiago is a shining example of this.  They tried to make a huge step forward, and, instead, went the other way, and fast.  Glass was the only one who couldn’t see it.  Him, and Benito Santiago, because he had cataracts.

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