Okay, I rail about Buck Showalter and his reluctance to give young players regular playing time.
But the situation with Justin Huber and the Kansas City Royals makes anything Buck has done in that regard pale in comparison.
Huber is a 23 year old first base prospect, one of the few real good prospects the Royals have...John Sickels gave him a B+ (the same grade he gave Billy Butler in the Royals system), and ranked Huber #3 overall among Kansas City prospects. BA ranked Huber #84 overall in its top 100 prospect rankings. BP's PECOTA system pegs Huber in the .280-.300 range in terms of EQA over the next five years. He's a very nice prospect. If he were in Texas, he'd probably be (or at least, should be) the starting DH right now.
Huber was hitting .301/.427/.603 at Omaha so far this season, and when DH Mike Sweeney went on the disabled list on May 3, Huber was called up.
Since then, Huber has gotten one start, and a total of 4 plate appearances. Buddy Bell won't play Huber...instead, Doug Mientkiciwz is playing first base every day, Matt Stairs is DHing, and Emil Brown and Aaron Guiel are manning the outfield corners.
The Royals are going nowhere. They are a terrible team, unlikely to win even 70 games. They've got a very good first base/DH prospect they've called up, a guy who is major league ready, and rather than letting him play 1B, instead of the replacement level guy they have there, or letting him DH, either sitting Stairs or moving Stairs to one of the corner outfield spots, they are having him just rot on the bench.
Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.
This is one of many, many reasons why Allard Baird is about to be fired.