Is this the worst baseball team of all time?

Going into last night’s game against the Blue Jays, the Kansas City Royals had a winning percentage of .250. Over a full season, that would produce a record of 41-121 – worse than the 1962 Mets, worse than the 2003 Tigers. It would be the worst season of all time, and it looks entirely within the reach of this team.

If anything, the Royals’ winning percentage probably understates just how bad they are. The team is enjoying unexpected production from first baseman Mike Sweeney, who has suffered through a variety of injuries over the last few years that have sapped his power and limited his playing time. Finally healthy, he ranks among the league leaders with a .336 batting average, a .616 slugging average, and eight home runs.

Twenty-one-year-old pitcher Zack Greinke, meanwhile, has improbably established himself as one of the better pitchers in the league, with a 3.38 ERA in 32 innings pitched going into last night’s game. And Andy Sisco, a 6-foot-10-inch lefty who was picked up in the Rule V draft, has been one of the best relievers in the game, on pace to pitch well over 100 innings with a sub-2.00 ERA.

Aside from those three, the Royals have gotten less than nothing out of any of their players. Sweeney has, literally, been the offense. Going by Value Over Replacement Player, a Baseball Prospectus statistic that measures how many runs a player has contributed over a freely available fringe player like Bubba Crosby, Sweeney has been worth 18.6 runs, while the entire rest of the team, with its broad base of ineptitude, has been worth -5.8. Much the same is true of the pitching staff; Greinke and Sisco aside, it’s been worth -9.2 runs.

The situation is almost comical. Second baseman Ruben Gotay and catcher John Buck have combined for a 1.000 OPS – the same as Sweeney’s. Former Mets scrub Joe McEwing has the fourth-highest OPS on the team with an unimpressive .690.Outfielders Eli Marrero and Terrence Long, who between them account for close to a quarter of the team’s $36 million payroll, have hit .201 in 144 at-bats. Starters Jose Lima and Brian Anderson, who were supposed to anchor the rotation, have combined for a 6.73 ERA in 13 starts.

That said, two questions arise: Can the Royals set the modern record for losses in a season? Is there any hope for the future?

The two questions are inextricable. Much of the reason the team is so bad is that many of its players are talented kids who are struggling. At second base, catcher, third base (Mark Teahen), shortstop (Angel Berroa), and center field (David DeJesus), the Royals have young players who have shown promise in the minor leagues or, in Berroa’s case, actually succeeded in the majors, and can be expected to develop into at least average regulars. Veterans with little upside like Marrero and Matt Stairs are only kept around for lack of other viable options and certainly aren’t in the way of any talented youngsters.

The same is true of the pitching staff: With the exceptions of Lima and Anderson, the team is running out kids like Greinke, Sisco, Denny Bautista, Mike Wood, and Ambiorix Burgos, who have shown real potential. Greinke looks like an ace in the making, and the Royals have a good shot at shaking a couple of decent mid-rotation starters and some useful relievers out of the rest of the staff if they’re patient.

What we’re seeing in Kansas City is the downside of a legitimate but risky strategy of playing whatever kids are at hand, filling in the gaps with cheap veterans who can be counted on to show up every day, and hoping everything comes together. In the long run, letting the kids learn on the job may be a better plan than trying to play for a few more wins. But there are clear drawbacks.

Bringing up a core of young talent in a losing environment like this one can’t possibly be good for their development. Aside from Greinke and Sisco, none of the team’s youngsters are really high-ceiling talents, but rather the sort who wash out of the game all the time and whose careers are easily ruined by a botched approach to development.

At the same time, the organization is trying to get some kind of win streak going, and in so doing is showing a notable impatience with young players to whom it isn’t fully committed. DH Calvin Pickering, who hit 42 home runs between Triple-A and the majors last year, was sent down to the minors after playing poorly in seven games this April, while first basemen Ken Harvey, who made the All-Star team last year, opened the season in the minors and has since been called up. Both are hugely flawed players, but this kind of indecisiveness does no one any good.

The big sword hanging over the Royals is, of course, the franchise’s penchant for trading its stars. Sweeney’s $11 million paycheck represents nearly a third of the team’s payroll, and if there’s any way they can possibly trade him, they should take it. Unfortunately for them, the market for 31-year-old first basemen with a history of major back injuries and huge salaries is inherently limited. Perhaps even worse for them, Sweeney has a limited no-trade clause (he has a veto on being traded to all but eight teams), and his salary escalates to $12.5 million if he’s traded.

The Yankees, among others, could use Sweeney’s bat at first base and are always in the market for old, declining, expensive, injury-prone veterans. But as was noted on Rob Neyer’s Web site, acquiring him would mean George Steinbrenner was paying his first basemen $35 million a year – approximately the Royals’ current payroll. Probably, Sweeney will stay right where he is.

Ultimately, I don’t think the Royals will lose 121 games, just because it’s so difficult to do. Every youngster would have to utterly fail to play up to his potential, while every veteran would have to play well below his established level. The team would have to lose all the close games while managing to blow many others besides. But it’s not impossible that all this will happen, especially should Sweeney be traded or go down with another back injury. What’s worst of all is that there’s nothing to do about it. The Royals put all their chips on the kids, and now they have to let them ride.