The Royals
are currently on fire. They really are. The only problem is they’re on fire
underneath someone’s old mattress and currently sparking old newspapers in the
biggest dumpster fire KC’s seen since, depending on who you ask, when Scott
Pioli was fired or the last time the Royals lost ten home games in a row, which
is just a hair over 12 months in case you were wondering.
The Dayton
Moore era has failed. There’s no other way to say it. He had what seemed to be
a very tall task ahead of him when he took the Royals over in 2006, but I don’t
have to tell you that his tenure has been nothing short of a disaster.
We’ve been
subjected to Moore’s old-school baseball platitudes and ridiculous clichés about
developing winning cultures and building a championship franchise, which takes
8-10 years apparently despite EVERYONE IN BASEBALL DOING IT IN LESS TIME THAN
THAT.
Also,
apparently “building a winning culture” means inviting the team’s main rival’s
mascot to your ballpark.
Tweeted from
the official Sluggerrr account, like being buddy-buddy with another team’s
mascot is totally acceptable in professional sports. The Royals just
solidifying their brand as a loser in not just Kansas City, but the entire
region, where pretty much everywhere outside of the 816 and 913 area codes have
been completely taken over by the Redbirds. That’s what winning does. Mr. K is
probably rolling over in his grave.
This front
office has completely lost it. It’s a rogue operation. There isn’t a plan in
place here, despite what anyone out at the ballpark will tell you. Chris Getz,
Jeff Francoeur, Elliot Johnson, Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas continue to get
regular playing time, despite being five of the worst everyday players in Major
League Baseball.
The Royals
front office has not been able to develop a major league caliber player in
seven years, except for players drafted by the previous GM or through trades.
Go through the best players on the Royals roster. All but one of them, Salvador
Perez, was drafted and developed by someone not named Dayton Moore.
I wish I
could find the tweet, but I remember Rany Jazayerli tweeting a conversation he
had with an AL Central scout about the Royals talent after their brutal 2012
start. The scout said something along the lines of “The Royals have a ton of
talent and no idea what to do with it.”
Turns out
this scout was right. The Royals have taken an embarrassment of riches and
turned it into a Dollar General. The Royals had NINE players ranked in Baseball America's Top 100 prospects in 2011. To date, none of them have become stars. That's an impossibility. Usually, one out of every three of the top 100 prospects turn into at least a serviceable major leaguer. None of those nine have become stars, and three of them haven't even made it to the major leagues yet, with two of them stalling out in AA. It's not bad luck. It's a broken development system led by men who have no idea what the hell they're doing with million-dollar investments.
Eric Hosmer
was the next Joey Votto in 2011. Naturally, the Royals wrecked his swing in the
offseason. Mike Moustakas looked pretty raw, but you could tell there was
something there. Sal Perez is one of the most exciting catching prospects in a
generation, but his plate discipline makes Jeff Francouer look like George
Kottaras and Perez’s free swinging has been completely ignored by the Royals
and I could almost guarantee you that the Royals encourage him to start
swinging away, believing that plate discipline is something that just magically
appears when a player becomes respected at the major league level.
Which brings
me to the magic beans theory.
It’s not
that the Royals are too old school or not up to date on the latest sabermetric
trends, it’s that the Royals are completely lacking common sense right now. The
offense has been non-existent for nearly a month, yet the 25-man roster has
remain unchanged with the exception of an injury and a bereavement leave.
This ship is
out to sea without a map. The Royals loaded up the boat once they got the cargo
that was the Hosmers and Moustakases and Perezeses and just set sail. Little
did they know that there were Getz and Francouer –sized holes in the ship’s
hull.
There’s a
perfect misunderstanding of where offense comes from in this front office. The
magic bean theory is a legitimate thing. Moore & Co. believe that you have
to fill roles on a team before they can start winning. Look back at every
single GMDM roster and you’ll see it. Every team has soft hitting, speedy guys
on it. In fact, you could argue that each Dayton Moore team has built their
roster around these guys and just assumed that the offense would come when
Hosmer and Moustakas hit the big leagues.
Apparently,
Dayton Moore didn’t realize that you can actually go get offense for pennies on
the dollar in free agency and there actually is a third baseman tree and corner
outfielder tree and first baseman tree and second baseman tree that yields
delicious fruit every December if you actually take a look at how players
perform instead of their scouting reports alone.
There’s
supposed to be a happy balance between scouting and stats in baseball. That’s
just the world we live in. That’s the modern game of baseball. Dayton Moore has
completely ignored how other baseball teams have won in the last decade and
thinks that he can change how the game is actually won. Which is with power and
plate discipline on offense and limiting walks and home runs on the other side
of the ball.
That’s what’s
wrong with this organization. An unwillingness to change. It doesn’t take seven
years to build a winning team. The fact that David and Dan Glass fell for that
line seven years ago still blows my mind to this day. Also, there’s the fact
that this front office is obsessed with how they are portrayed in the media.
Here’s a tip: do your job well enough and don’t tell people it takes 8-10 years
to do your damn job and you won’t have to worry about how you’re perceived in
the media. Your obsession with public relations reeks of insecurity.
It’s been a
long time coming. Dayton’s gotta go. I’d argue him as not only the worst GM in
baseball right now, but also as one of the worst GMs in baseball history.
Seven years.
Seven freaking years. Also, roughly 25% of the Royals current playoff drought.
Dayton Moore has been at the helm of a sinking ship and remains fervent that
the entire side of the ship that’s missing is just being patched up and we’ll
be back on course in no time, hoping that a “winning culture” will spring up
out of the ground after generation(s) of ineptitude. All is well.
Time for a
change, but I don’t know what kind of good that’s gonna do with the group of
geniuses currently in charge of the team that let garbage like this happen at
their home ballpark Tuesday night:
After having worked in professional sports for three years, it was obvious to all of us in the front office what the most important thing was. Respecting your fans. After pulling crap like this and alienating what few die-hards you have left for the last three decades, it's a wonder how any of the people in this front office have jobs. Dollar hot dogs probably.
Time to blow it all up. I'm sick of it.
