but disagree that Dayton needs to be fired already. He deserves at least 2-3 more years to see what the farm produces. Firing him 3 years into a complete system overhaul would be a terrible decision.

It’s sad though that it’s like the Baird years all over again: “Just wait until Player X and Y get here….that’s when we’ll start dominating the division!”

One other note: It’s amazing from the comments on the article and on other blogs, just how many people think/thought that 18-11 start was the true talent level of the team. The incredible starts by Crisp/Jacobs/Bloomquist are taken as the norm instead of the outlier, and injuries are blamed for all of the problems.

Also amusing are the: “No one could’ve predicted that this team would be so bad!” Sure, other than the projection systems and general RR readership.

GMDM overpaid for Farnsworth and Guillen. He also overpaid for Meche and that is looking like a pretty good investment right now. The Royals have to overpay to attract free agents, and since the AAA and AA clubs still have major holes they will probably have to overpay again in this next off-season.

Moore has also shown patience with the development of the team’s young players, and the owners need to wait to see if that patience is rewarded. Under the previous regime Moose and Hosmer would be in AA by now. I like the fact that they have to show mastery of one level before going up another level, and maintain it or go back down (e.g. Rowdy Hardy). One thing that has driven me nuts this year is the little league errors – I would like to see them get those out of their system in the minors rather than on FSM.

The Royals have to overpay to attract free agents

DM’s supposed strength, the draft. Probably is just that. We will see, but it at least looks promising. But Baird hardly sucked did he? He drafted Butler, Gordon, Aviles, Maier and of course Greinke. The decision to take Hooch was probably his also, even if he wasn’t actually in place by draft time.

All players with significant ML service. Kila will almost certainly join them at some point. He also drafted JP Howell, who DM traded in for Gathright. Maybe I’m out of line with most people’s expectations, but I’d say that is a pretty decent crop from 6 years a GM. The downside is that he left no real depth in the minors, but with the financial constraints he operated under (that DM doesn’t) I wonder how much of that is really his fault.

On the major league side, they look very similar. Both haven’t done a very good job of evaluating major league players.

I don’t know. I just don’t quite see the massive upgrade that others do.

We needed an outfielder and we needed some thump, and Moore’s first choice to fill both needs was Torii Hunter. I remember debating with friends, at the time, who would be a better sign Hunter or Andruw Jones. However, the only reason there was a debate at all was that we were assuming we would get Jones at a discount. A major discount. Jones had just come off an eyebrow raising season where his walk/strikeout ratio skewed steeply in the wrong direction. He was obviously an extremely risky sign, even at a discount. That Moore went after Hunter first somewhat lessens the fauxpaus of what he wound up doing, but the Hunter pursuit notwithstanding, plan B was Jones. And I recall Dutton-based rumors that Moore was offering a LOT of money to Jones, (which surprises no one).

Of course, Ned Colletti offered even more than Moore, so I guess we have to include Colletti in this discussion. But at least Colletti has L.A. market money to burn on mistakes.

But the cake that Moore baked in 2007 and iced with Ho-Ram and Farns, was Hoagy. Nobody liked that contract. Why it didn’t get national media attention for its badness, I have no idea. Perhaps because national Moore critics had been made to look so stupide my Meche the year before, they feared making the same mistake twice. While Guillen was abstractly intriguing—mainly because of the awfulness of the Royals’ offense—the contract figure was shocking. And Moore was competing against exactly no one for Guillen. We predicted here at the Discerning Eye of Royals Review at the time of that signing that the Guillen contract would hamstring our ability to sign free agents for three years and that’s exactly what it did. It was an inexplicable contract at the time it was consummated, and it’s inexplicable now.

Plug that last sentence into the Farns deal.

So, while I really, really like what Moore has done with the farm system, and really even like some of the moves he’s made at the major league level, Guillen Ho-Ram and Farns have completely mitigated all of that progress. It’s not those three players, mind you, it’s the 17+ million per year that any number of other players should have been earning in Royal Blue.

I just don’t trust the man. How can you?

And that’s all it is. Neither 2006-2007 or 2007-2008 was bad. 2007—the Meche signing was spectacular, the Soria pick was even better, Angel Berroa was done away with (you really don’t want him back, do you?), and a lot of dross was turned for something else worth trying (e.g. MacDougal, Sisco, Burgos). 2008 was not all that, but frustration with scoring meant tha the team and the fan base desperately wanted a power hitter in a non-power hitter market—the downhill tumbling Jones and Torii Hunter were the top of the market, and Guillen literally was the next guy available. Add in the RH requirement (not necessarily unreasonable due to having far more LH offensive “threats” in the lineup (Gordon, Teahen, DDJ vs. Butler and ???) at that point. He’s overpaid for what he’s absolutely worth, but was only overpaid a little in that in that market (3/30 might have been right). Olivo was a signing out of frustration for waiting for Buck to put it all together, and was better last year than this year. Ramirez was the kind of pickup I wish he did all the time, but you’ll miss with as many as you hit with that approach. And Hillman was considered a top managerial “prospect” that, at the time, seemed like a good idea.

I concede that, other than the Greinke extension and the Crisp signing (which admitted backfired, but was worth the gamble for outfield range and “veteran presence”), 2008-2009 was a dog. A big part of that was the August 2008 decision to stock the team with veterans who “play the game the right way” and “know how to be major leaguers” so that the major league team was no longer a place to see if they should be a major leaguer or not anymore. I’m fully convinced that recreating the “attitude” and “intangibles” of the team was at least as important as the quality of the players to Moore. Unfortunately, they’ve all turned out to have a collective quality of crap. Further, he tried to get ahead of a market that he didn’t need to get ahead of. And I admit the indecision involved with players like Gload, German, Gobble, who should have been cut loose long before they were cost the team money, makes it even worse Lots of other bizarre, unfortunate, and plain bad moves—keeping TPJ while picking up Bloomquist (or just keeping him at all), not moving Teahen when he didn’t have a position here, keeping Buck and Olivo. It was a bad offseason, a really bad offseason, and it’s translated on the field, as expected by many before the first pitch on opening day.

But…it’s still only one bad offseason. My hope is that he learns from it and doesn’t make the same mistakes again. Now, if 2009-2010 looks like this year in new player acquisition, no more benefit will be given to the doubt, and I to will join the questioning of Moore’s ability to construct a major league roster. Until then, too many other good systemic changes (big money drafts, a real Latin American presence, a front office full of experienced baseball guys) allow me to give the guy a little more time with some sense of peace.