I can’t take the Royals seriously for now. I stopped watching them in late July because I knew that they had no chance of making the second half interesting, albeit I did not expect them to completely collapse in August.

The Royals organization is in a painful rebuilding process, and until that process is complete as a fan I have lost interest in taking part. It would be an entirely different story, if say, I was working on the rebuilding project in the Royals front office, but for now consider me analogous to a formerly entrenched investor in a once great company that completely fell on its face in recent years due to mismanagement. I’ve sold most, but not all of, my stock in the Royals and won’t start investing again until I know I can get get the returns I want. Until then I will pause every few weeks to check the share price (win loss column) and glance at my quarterly returns (see how potentially promising assets like Butler, Gordon and prospects are performing).

To move away from the analogy, I haven’t hit the Rob Neyer point where I’ve given up on the Royals franchise entirely, but I really don’t see them seriously contending until 2011 or 2012 when, hopefully, the positive shift in organizational thinking reflected in the 2007 and 2008 drafts bear fruit. Until then, I’ll pay attention to teams worth watching.