The shoes that have to be filled at third base in Kansas City are rather large and may never be filled by any Kansas City Royal’s player ever.  Right now Mike Moustakas, and his “Moooooooose” call seem to be filling that hole quite well. is definitely beginning to look like he could be a good following to the great third basemen of the Royal’s past, George Brett. Ever since Brett retired the team has been trying to fill a hole at third base that just would not fill up all the way.  Many have tried and many have been good enough to be average to a little above average at best but none have shown the promise that Moustakas has shown this earlier in his career.  All throughout his time in the organization people have known that he would hit and he would hit well but it is the little things that make him a potential All Star third basemen.

After going through his struggles at the Major League level, like he showed at every level when he was first promoted to that level, Moustakas have done nothing but improved every part of his game. Hitting was always at a premium for Moustakas at every level but every one always said that his defense would have to improve to become a great player at the big level.  Over the off-season Moustakas worked tirelessly and continues to work tirelessly everyday to improve his defense which by all accounts this season has looked spectacular.  When the Royals acquired shortstop Alcides Escobar from the Brewers in the Zack Greinke trade, a lot of fans and people in the organization thought he was brought in to help out the future left side of the infield since he is such a superb defender and Moustakas was just average.  But now that the defense of Moustakas has improved, not only could the two end up being the best defensive tandem on the left side of the infield in the league but now that they are both seeming to find their stride at the plate it could end up being the best left side of the infield overall. Moustakas has seemed to improve not only in his accuracy of his throws but also in his range.  Not being the quickest footed guy in the game he has to find ways to get the angle on balls hit to him so that he can make some of the plays that he has made this season.  So now with the addition of his defense it seems that hitters will never want to hit the ball to the left side against the Royals.

No question that Moustakas struggled with the bat over the first part of his rookie season but as the season went on he stepped it up a ton and showed fans what they could be watching from him for a long time coming.  The thing that everyone thought at the beginning of this season was that he would be the young star to hit his sophomore slump yet he is the one in talks of playing for the American League in the summer classic at Kauffman Stadium.  With the struggles that Eric Hosmer has shown this season, the fact that Moustakas has stepped up to the plate and just raked and stepped into the three spot in the lineup that was supposed to be filled by Hosmer is one of the reasons that the team finds themselves right in the thick of things in the Central Division.

The Royals have seemed to found themselves a little bit as a team over the past month with a winning June.  Moustakas must continue to play the way he has played this season for the Royals to have success. With the leadership of Billy Butler over the whole team, Moustakas has to step up as the leader of the young guys on this team.  Kind of like the vice president.  And the biggest thing that a leader can do is produce and so far this season the Moose has produces.

Our final look around the St. Louis Cardinals stops on the pitching staff. As games in Jupiter begin shortly here is a look at the make-up of said staff before they break camp.

The 2011 St. Louis Cardinals were admittedly built around their offense. The trade of Brendan Ryan coupled with the acquisition of Ryan Theriot meant a defensive sacrifice at one of the toughest spots in the field. Combining this with Skip Schumaker at second and the rather limited range of the outfield, the team surrendered 84 unearned runs, the most in the majors.

The pitching staff, initially, was thought to be somewhat of an asset, if not overly a huge strength. The tandem of Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright would be generally considered one of the strongest 1-2 combinations in the majors. As Murphy’s Law quickly pointed out, that wasn’t the case.

Heading into 2012 the Cardinals, with a healthy Wainwright, look to have the best rotation in the NL Central.

Chris Carpenter;  11-9, 3.45 ERA, 191 K, 105 ERA+, 1.256 WHIP

The first half of 2011 was a pretty rough one for Carpenter. As of June 17, he was 1-7 with an ERA of 4.47. After that, though, something clicked in his head, and he became the Chris Carpenter we’re accustomed to seeing, going 10-2 the rest of the way with a 2.73 ERA.

As an unforeseen consequence of the playoff run, however, Carpenter threw a total of 273.1 innings. Back when teams had four-man rotations, this wasn’t generally a big deal. Nowadays, especially for a pitcher who turns 37 in April and has had two surgeries on his throwing arm, it could be pretty significant. The Cardinals have already announced they will abbreviate his pitching schedule in spring training, and possibly beyond, in order to accommodate his arm. Carpenter signed a new two-year deal in the off-season, likely making the Cardinals the final team of his career.

Adam Wainwright; DNP

As soon as it was announced Wainwright would undergo Tommy John surgery, the season got a lot darker. There’s little question that even with Carpenter on the team, Wainwright had been the ace of the staff the last couple of seasons. In a two-year span, he’d gone 39-19 with a 2.53 ERA, 1.131 WHIP, and 3.48 K/BB ratio.

By all accounts, he’s throwing hard and able to snap off his curveball as effectively as before the surgery. Here’s hoping for a full season of health from him. The Cardinals picked up his option for 2012 and 2013, after which he’ll become a free agent. When he’s healthy, he’s one of the dominant starting pitchers in the league. This is, unfortunately, the second major injury he’s suffered in the last four years (he suffered a finger injury in 2008 that forced him to miss more than two months), so one has to wonder whether durability will become an issue.

Jaime Garcia; 13-7, 3.56 ERA, 156 K, 102 ERA+, 1.320 WHIP

Most likely the biggest factor was fatigue. After Garcia missed part of 2008 and most of 2009 due to Tommy John surgery, Garcia threw 163.1 innings in 2010 (previously, the most he’d thrown was 155 innings…in 2006). Typically, pitching coaches try to limit the increase in innings on a young arm to no more than 25 over the previous season, but Garcia blew past that in 2011: 194.2 in the regular season and another 25.2 in the playoffs.

Garcia has emerged as a legitimate above-average pitcher, and the return of Adam Wainwright should help alleviate some of the pressure on him. He signed an extension to his contract through 2015, with team options for 2016 and 2017, so he’ll be around a while. When his game is on, he’s on; he just has to improve the consistency of when he’s on.

Kyle Lohse; 14-8, 3.39 ERA, 111 K, 107 ERA+, 1.168 WHIP

Lohse is in the final year of his contract, and he was fully healthy last year and produced, unlike the first two years of his contract. He may not be as effective this year (his Batting Average for Balls in Play was an unusually low .269, a full 33 points below his career average), but if he stays healthy, he’s one of the better number four starters in the league. One interesting note about his career is that his best years tend to come every third year: 2002, 2005, 2008, and 2011 were all notable for being better than the rest of his career. Also, he’s the only member of the Cardinals’ starting rotation who hasn’t undergone Tommy John surgery.

Jake Westbrook; 12-9, 4.66 ERA, 104 K, 78 ERA+, 1.533 WHIP

Westbrook was the odd man out in the rotation during the playoffs, but he still played an important role. Westbrook pitched in two games and threw two scoreless innings, including the crucial 11th inning of Game 6. Facing four batters, two of which included Nelson Cruz and Mike Napoli, Westbrook limited the Rangers to a single base hit, setting the stage for David Freese’s heroics.

Other than the season he missed due to Tommy John, Westbrook’s been a generally durable pitcher. He reported to camp this year having lost about 25 lbs. in an effort to increase his endurance and lighten the workload on his legs. I won’t be so bold as to predict a 20 win, sub-3.00 ERA season, but if Furcal can stay healthy and the Greene/Descalso combination can perform adequately at second base, it’s not unreasonable to expect 13-14 wins and a solid 180-200 innings from him. Coming from a fifth starter, you can’t ask for too much more.

Bullpen

At the end of the 2011 regular season, the Cardinals ranked 17th in bullpen ERA. But this was a group that evolved during the course of the season, as young relievers settled in, and by the time the Cardinals got to the World Series, it was a very different bullpen than it was in the frustrating days of early September. Jason Motte was never formally named the closer under Tony La Russa; maybe he’ll get that title from Mike Matheny. Marc Rzepczynski is viewed as an untapped gem, and maybe with a full season working under pitching coach Dave Duncan, he’ll become a dominant setup man.

Injury Contingencies

Now, should one of the starters go down, the two most likely emergency starters would be Lance Lynn or Kyle McClellan. McClellan held his own as a starter last season for most of the first half, but eventually he faltered, perhaps due in part to lack of stamina (formerly a starter in the minors, he pitched the first three years and the last half of 2011 in the bullpen). Lynn is also a career starter in the minors who found his niche in the majors in the bullpen. He started two games last year, and other than his first rough outing, he was pretty lights out: in his final 17 games, he went 1-0 with a 2.15 ERA and allowed a slashline of just .204/.281/.301 while striking out 35 batters in 29.1 innings. During the playoffs, he was pretty solid. In the NLCS and World Series, apart from Game 6 (when he gave up three earned runs in 1.2 innings), he gave up a total of one earned run in 9.1 innings.

Cookie and Freddie. To a little kid just learning about baseball, they seemed more like cartoon characters or puppets than ballplayers.

Cookie Rojas was small, wore horn-rimmed glasses and seemed to bounce around the field. Since I didn’t even know what Cuba was, he just seemed strangely “foreign” to me.

And if Cookie seemed small, Freddie Patek was downright tiny. Nicknamed “The Flea,” Patek was probably shorter than the 5’5” that he was listed as, and he couldn’t have weighed 150 pounds.

I first started watching baseball in the late 1970s, just in time to catch the end of Rojas’ career, so by then Frank White was the man at second base – winning gold gloves and going to the All-Star Game every season. But this name continued to pop up as I watched or listened to the Royals’ broadcasts – Cookie Rojas.

The way they talked about him, he must have been something I remember thinking to myself.

Patek was in the starting lineup when I started paying attention, but I was already a fan of UL Washington. I didn’t like it that they kept playing Patek and treating him like he was something special.

But last week I did a lot of digging to compile a look back at the shortstop position throughout Royals history for I70baseball.com. What I realized is that I had come along a little too late to fully appreciate what Rojas and Patek had meant to the franchise. So I decided to take a look back at the beloved middle-infield tandem of the Royals’ early days.

As a fledgling expansion team, KC acquired Cookie Rojas in a trade with St. Louis in the middle of 1970. Rojas, 31 at the time, was already a respected veteran, having spent several seasons with the Phillies.

After the 1970 season, the Royals made another trade to acquire yet another National League infielder. Patek came in a six-player deal with the Pirates. Patek was 26 and had played three partial seasons for the Pirates.

Whether it was the exuberance of the expansion environment, the ballpark, or the chemistry between the two, something clicked. The team suddenly became a contender in 1971, due in no small part to the teaming of Rojas and Patek in the middle infield. The team, which had not previously cracked the 70-win barrier, bolted to an 85-76 mark and second place in the AL West.

In the season, Rojas batted .300, hit 6 home runs and drove in 59 in just 115 games and was named an All-Star. Patek, meanwhile, never known as a hitter, had the best offensive season of his career, hitting .267 with 6 home runs and 36 RBIs. The pesky Patek sparked the offense with 49 stolen bases and led the AL with 11 triples.

In the days when small, agile infielders were counted on for defense and offense was just a bonus, the two Royals infielders were so appreciated that they both received votes for MVP that season. And best of all, the two helped give KC a degree of credibility. No longer would this be a sad-sack collection of talent-less cast-offs.

Rojas continued to hit well the next several seasons. Patek was more of a light-hitter, but still the admiration for the two continued.

Although he hit just .212 in 1972, Patek was named an All-Star, as was Rojas, who batted .261 with 3 homers and 53 RBIs. Imagine the pride the franchise must have felt in seeing its middle-infield tandem take their place amongst the All-Stars of that season. In that celebrity exhibition, Rojas became the first non-American born player to homer for the American League.

In 1973, Rojas had the best offensive season of his career, batting .276 with 6 homers and 69 RBIs and being named an All-Star for the third consecutive time. Patek had what for him was a pretty good seasons at the plate – .234, 5 HR, 45 RBI. But a youngster made an appearance in the KC infield that year – 22-year-old Frank White. White actually played three times as many games at short as at second that season.

Rojas was named an All-Star for the fourth straight season in 1974. He batted .271 with 6 homers and 60 RBIs that year, but the team took a dip to below .500 and White began to see action at second, short and third base.

1975 was a year of transition for the middle infield. White played 68 games at second, 42 at short. The team went 91-71, but the 36 year-old Rojas’ numbers began to dip.

White took over second base full time in 1976, beginning a new era of great infield play in KC. Patek would make the All-Star game in 1976 and 1978. White meanwhile would win the Gold Glove from 1977 to 1982 and make four All-Star appearances during that span. Rojas played out the 1977 season before retiring.

By that time I was watching every game, spoiled by the play of White at second and entertained by the athletic Washington, toothpick hanging out of his mouth, at short. But the names of Patek and Rojas continued to resonate in Royals’ lore. The championship-caliber teams of the late 1970s to mid 1980s would owe a debt of gratitude to the scappy little infielders that helped build the franchise.

Cookie and Freddie. They were better than any cartoon or puppet show. They were All-Stars. And they were the foundation for the great Royals teams to be built upon.