Well, we're all still in a bad mood after today's season-ending loss. Remember the Kila Ka'aihue PA Prediction Contest however? We'll have plenty of time to digest the day's/month's/summer's events of course, so we might as well discuss our little contest before we all forget it.

You'd have to be a real genius to guess exactly how many plate appearances Kila would end up with, wouldn't you?

So, let me extend my heartiest congratulations to...

(reading the entries)

Some user named "Royals Review", who predicted that Kila would end up at 24 trips to the plate. Wow, and first guess too. This dude must have known people on the inside to claim one of the most likely numbers so quickly after the story was posted.

Thanks to everyone who played.

Kila sits at seventeen plate appearances as a Royal this season.

Inspired by Hillman's September love of playing our precious Jose Guillen at DH, I've decided to pay a Huberian homage to the Punch, with the Royals Review Official Kila PA Prediction Contest.

This is what you shall do:

1. Guess how many PAs Kila will end up with at season's end and post it below.
2. Additionally, post your guess as to Kila's final OPS. This will be the tiebreaker.
3. Guesses go on a first come-first-come basis. If you guess 20, you claim 20 and no one else can snag it. The tiebreakers are used if no one makes an exact guess.
4. Entries close at 5 PM Central today.
5. The winner shall recieve a Royals Review T-Shirt.
   

With the annual September privilege of expanded rosters, the Royals promoted forgotten savior Ryan Shealy and internet hero Kila Ka'aihue. With supposed prospect Billy Butler and Everyday Ross Gload (who started something like 400 consecutive games for Hillman) the most impotent team of the decade suddenly found itself with four options at 1B/DH.

Lets take a look at how Hillman has divided the playing time thus far.

Sigh.

Although Hillman has somewhat surprisingly relegated Gload to the bench -- though he did start in left on 9/5 -- he's seemingly undermined that partial solution by introducing Guillen into the DH mix. Given the viccisitudes of the Hillman-Guillen relationship, it's impossible for this uinformed outsider to say exactly why this is happening, however the simplest explanation is that Hillman is loath to remove Citizen Hoagy from the lineup for fear of clubhouse eruption #117 of 2008.

Dayton Moore deserves these two, since he brought them together.

With Guillen sliding into semi-regular DH mode, a wider playing time philosophy may be exposing itself:

Now, I know what you're expecting: an impassioned cry of Kila Now! and 2-4 Huber anecdotes. To do so would be to do a disservice to Huber's legacy however. This is still Kila's first callup, not his third or fourth, and we are still dealing with a player who has only seen something like 140 PAs above AA. A large part of Kila's callup is to acclimate him to the off-the-field side of professional baseball and to reward him, emotionally and financially, for his tremendous performance this season. We're stil two years from Kila reaching true Huber status, and unlike, say, Huber v. Minky years ago, there's still some definite upside potential ($1 dollar to Simmons) in Ryan Shealy. It's in the best interests of the franchise to get Shealy more at bats than Kila this month.

The problem is that Shealy isn't playing enough, and may never, given Hillman's desire to keep Guillen and Butler in the lineup every... single... day. Guillen, granted, is possibly a seperate issue, and only a partial member of the 1B/DH club. Yes, he shouldn't be playing, but maybe it's just easier for everyone if he does, even with the cascade effects this creates.

Butler however, as weird as it seems to say this, should not be playing everyday anymore. The Royals have been remarkably patient with Billy this season, on the heels of handig him an everyday role from late June of his rookie year. Yes, Butler remains light years ahead of the other candidates, and indeed of everyone else on the roster, in terms of his potential ceiling. (Light years, ceiling? Yay mixed metaphors.) Nevertheless, the blogosphere is nothing if not the exploration of minor issues in major detail, and Butler's development -- which has been towards Ken Harvey this season -- is not going to be curtailed if he loses 20 September PAs to Ryan Shealy. He's still 22, and to date, he's the owner of 796 Big League PAs. Hillman can take the pedal off the Butler accelerator over the next three weeks. I'm no Shealy fan at this point, but you could make a case that there still might be something there, especially given his injury issues last season. He's certainly not in the Gload zone yet.

The Royals have twenty games left and roughly 180 1B/DH PAs to play with. Trey's been something of a dullard thus far in terms of sneaking guys PAs late in games (Kila in as a PR, wow, that was Buddy-esque) and I'd love to see that change. Overall, here's how I'd like to see those final 180 PAs distributed:

Shealy Now!

Okay GMDM, you may have noticed we have a slight problem scoring runs this season. You may have noticed that this was true last year, as well. The player who was brought to help fix this problem, Jose Guillen, has fallen flat on his fanny. The rest of the babies haven't helped out that much, either; David DeJesus is having his typical solid year, and Alex Gordon was as much fun as hyperactive kittens on roller skates against righties this year, but the fact remains that this team is pretty bad at hitting a baseball. Mike Aviles, a guy who still loses playing time to Tony Pena Jr., handily leads the Royals in position player VORP at 27.1. That's good for a tie for 68th in MLB alongside Alfonso Soriano. Aviles was not even in the team's plans as a utility guy at the beginning of the year, and has only accounted for 6.2% of the Royals PAs this year. In other words, that's not good. I mean, it's great for Aviles, but it illustrates a pretty ugly picture.

So, this brings me to the recent comments you made on 610 radio, which sadly I didn't have the pleasure of listening to. It's all right - don't bother telling me your exact words, some of my friends have clued me in. Basically what you seem to be suggesting is that, with the team that hitting with all of the prowess of a blindfolded six-year-old hyped up on smarties going after a "my little pony" pinata, there's not much chance of one Kila Ka'aihue being called up in September. Something about a 40-man roster, yadda yadda yadda.

This is kind of distressing news to me, I must admit.

 First of all, I am well aware of the possibility that Kila might just be a AAAA slugger, as 24 is pretty late as breakouts in AA go. I am aware that not many of the players with Ka'aihue's career path go on to become major league regulars. Okay? So understand that I'm rational about all this. The catch is, we are in the midst of yet another year where the Royals are entering September with nothing to play for but next year, so it seems rather counterintuitive to me that we wouldn't call up someone who could potentially fill a desperate need on this roster. And I'm all about going with the instincts, Dayton.

"Hawaiian Punch" as we blogging simpletons like to call him, hit .314/.463/.624 in AA this year. I won't waste time pointing out how good that line is, because your must have noticed. I'm assuming that because Ka'aihue's hitting earned him a promotion to the PCL in AAA ball. I wonder if you've noticed that he hasn't stopped hitting there. Yes, there might be some BABIP flukiness in his year, but Ka'aihue's 100-odd appearances in AAA have seen him hit .330/.455/.648. Yes, that's in the PCL, but we can take those numbers with a grain of salt and they're still pretty tasty. For the year, Hawaiian Punch has hit .317/.461/.630, with 100 walks and only 63 strikeouts. That's a 1.091 OPS. He could lose 300 OPS points in the transition to the majors, and he'd still be hitting better than Ross Gload. That's three hundred, as in a "3" followed by two "0s," Mr. Moore. That's the difference between Albert Pujols and our own David DeJesus. It's also an overrated movie based on an overrated graphic novel, too, but I digress. Back to my main point.

Ka'aihue has done nothing to but flat out rake in 2008, and if it costs us a 40-man roster spot to have him get a shot in September, then I promise you we've got some players lying around that really don't mean much. Off the top of my head, there's Tony Pena Jr., Joey Gathright, Ross Gload, Jeff Fulchino, Matt Tupman, and Shane Costa that all look like great candidates to be waived bye-bye. I'd include Kip Wells on this list, too, but you just claimed him so and I don't want to make you think that it's a better idea to get rid of Wells than it is to get rid of Ross Gload. I know I'm forgetting a bunch of players, too. Point is, clearing some of these bums off the 40-man roster would be addition by subtraction. If you were to give Ka'aihue a shot, it would be addition by subtraction AND Ka'aihue might keep hitting the ball, too.

Maybe I'm just an idiot who sits around and "disseminates his unqualified opinions to the masses," as my pal Stephen A. Smith has put it, but this just seems a common sense decision to me. Let me bullet point this for you:

• We do not have a good offense.
• We are a rebuilding team with nothing to lose at the moment.
• Kila Ka'aihue stands a half-decent chance at improving offense if we bring him up in September. He also might prove to be a long-term answer.
• Therefore, we should bring up Kila Ka'aihue.

As to the 40-man issue:

• We need a spot on the 40-man roster to bring Hawaiian Punch up.
• Tony Pena Jr. and other neverwillbes are on the 40-man roster
• DFA Tony Pena Jr., and...
• Surprise! Now we have space! We are not going to miss a glove man with a negative OBP. Shake a tree, and ten gloves fall out.

Now look, GMDM, I think you've done a pretty good job so far since you've taken over this team. I am willing to defend your work on more than one front, and I think you'll do a good job getting this team ready to make a run at contention. I tell you this because 1. it is true and 2. I'm about to make fun of you so I want you to know I'm doing so as a concerned friend.

See those bullet point arguments above, Dayton? Especially the first one? They seem a lot like this deeply-rooted-in-common sense argument which comes up quite a bit in "real life." Suppose there's someone you want to date (stay with me here, I know this may seem a little juvenile) and you know she's available. You could:

• Ask her to go on a date (with you, of course, make sure she knows that).
• Not ask her to go on a date.

And if you take the first course of action, there are really only two possible outcomes:

• She will say "yes," and you will go out.
• She will say "no," and you won't go out.
• She will die in a tragic blimp accident.

Sorry, forgot about that last one. Anyways, if you choose the second option, there is only one outcome:

• You won't go out.

Now, far be it for me to give relationship advice, being the only moddie around here who isn't married, but that's a pretty frigging simple equation. I understand why you don't want to tango with Ryan Shealy, Dayton - he disappointed you last year and you doubt he's changed much. I have to say, though, that Kila's available. He seems to be able to hit the ball. He has a nice smile. You might as well give the guy a shot. If he fails? What do we lose? More games? Ahahaha. Good one.

Come September, call up Kila Ka'aihue. I'm not sure if anyone in the minors this year has earned it more.