The Royals ranked 13 out of 14 in walks, and 13 out of 14 in OBP in the AL.  I suspect hackapalozza also strongly contributed to the Royals finishing 14 out of 14 in slugging percentage.  They were swinging at anything they could make contact with, not forcing pitchers to throw balls that could be driven.

What do you get for hacking away?  Theoretically more base hits.  And I guess this worked as the Royals were not in the league basement in terms of batting average.  They finished 11 out of 14.  Cold comfort there.

I won't be happy if Hillman bunts a lot next year, but as long as he promotes plate discipline he will compare favorably to Bell.

I'm not defending Barnett.  I don't know if he does his job well or poorly or somewhere in between.  I don't think he's particularly important, regardless.  But this mindless "look at the hitting stats; it's Barnett's fault" illogic always rubs me the wrong way.  I'm not saying that is what you are doing, per se, JQ, but there is certainly a lot of that going on here.

Certainly, outrage at Barnett and his retention is silly at best.  We have no idea how relevant he is.  We're only guessing.  I doubt big league hitting coaches do much, nor do they affect much.

Similarly, McClure gets praise heaped on him.  He suddenly has Meche, Bannister, Greinke, Soria and Dotel and amazingly the pitching staff is a lot better.  And he gets credit for that?  Hilarious.  Did he sign or trade for any of those guys?  With better talent you get better results.  Why does he get the credit?

I think most, if not all, readers of this site are a lot less finicky then you give credit, and will be willing to stand by Hillman even if he fails to to have a winning first couple of months, provided that he makes smart decisions.  That was where Bell failed.

Sure, there will still be debates about whether the manager should have used Gobble instead of Riske in the 8th, or whatever, but those sort of questions are to be expected, particularly in a loss. It's part of the fun of being a fan.

While Bell was subject to this sort of scrutiny, and indubitably upset people with some of his decisions, this was not the primary reason why people didn't want him to manage the team anymore.  

It was because he endangered his pitchers by letting them throw too many pitches, or because he didn't give young players a chance, or because he almost always assembled his starting rotation from the worst possible candidates, or because of those candidates he would stick with his worst performers (Lima, Redman, Elarton all come to mind) well beyond what would be considered reasonable to do so, or because he favored defense over offense (e.g. Larue over Buck, Minky over anybody, T. Long over anybody) even when it was painfully obvious that we needed to score more runs and the supposed defensive gains sometimes didn't actually exist.  

These weren't tactical in-game decisions that a person could point to as a problem after the fact.  These were deeply flawed strategic decisions that most reasonable people could see were mistakes far in advance.

The fact that Bell's in-game decisions were so laughable (e.g. pinch running Huber, then pinch hitting Pena a batter later) just added fuel to the fire.

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With Hillman, we have a manager that has taken bad teams and turned them into champions.   With Bell, we have a manager that has taken several bad teams, and made them worse, sometimes historically so.  

Provided Hillman makes smart strategic decisions, I don't think people are going to give up on him if we have a losing record through May, even if he makes a tactical error from time to time.  

Hillman sounds like he's gonna coach what he has, so if Dayton signs a masher or two and Gordon and Butler develop a lot in year two, he'll play for the big hits.  If not, then he'll play small ball and rely on the pitching staff.  Again, let's wait until something's happening to be coached until we start taking positions on the coaching.  Until then (and even after then), what the front office does with the roster over the next three months is far more important.