I’ll put my two cents in too.

How quickly things can change in a sport where “rebuilding is a long process that we must be patient with”. Ok I have no one to source with my quote but this is definitely the same context that I saw countless times in 2007 and 2008 on this site and I totally agree with it. It seems as if all the rational thinking of how tough it is to rebuild an organization that was so awful has just disappeared.

Like HRTC, I’m not here to say that DM is doing a wonderful job and everything is fine and dandy. This year is a dissappointment (so far). DM’s window has been put closed ever so slightly, I believe.

But still, the things that he can’t control, like injuries are something that I know have affected this team winning at least a couple more games. I mean c’mon, our roster consists of Luis Hernandez, TPJ, Tug Hulett and Willie Bloomquist right now,,,,uggh. The argument will be, “well he should’ve got better players to be backups”. Well solid major leaguers don’t grow on trees and I feel that with the lower organizational depth that hasn’t quite hit the upper minors yet, in a couple years, we won’t have terrible replacement guys, we’ll have replacement level replacement guys.

This team is hard to watch right now, I’ll admit that. Mostly because of the hitters. To me, a solid middle of the lineup guy + Alex Gordon is all we’d need to be right in this division race with our pitching. I don’t think that is sooo far off that we all need to jump ship.

My final question is, If the Royals finish with more wins than last season, just like every season under Dayton Moore, what will your opinion be of where the KC Royals are going?

BTW, good post RR

I wish could look at the injuries as a legitimate reason why this team is bad right now, but to me, that’s a bit of a red herring. Let’s be honest: there just isn’t that much talent on this team, and that falls almost exclusively at this point on Moore’s shoulders.

Look up and down the roster (including the DL). Greinke is a star, and Soria is very good. As a Royal, Meche has pitched very well in spots but terrible in others (I disagree that the Royals have “two number one starters”). You can make a case that Butler and Hochevar have a chance to be above-average players down the road (along with Gordon, when he returns). The rest of the roster is primarily filled with average to below-average major leaguers with limited upside at best. It’s really as simple as that, I’m afraid.

I, like everyone else, am hoping that the team’s recent increase in spending on the draft and international free agents will pay dividends down the road. But right now, it’s extremely difficult to look at how the team is being run and find reasons for optimism.

It’s nearly impossible to be a Royals fan and not be cynical about the future. I fully expect Hosmer/Moustakas/Crow to flame out. DM will continue to make dumb FA signings. TPJ will be on the roster next year. Ad nauseum.

But I’m also optimistic. By all accounts, the farm system is improving. Our starting pitching is very good. Glass spends some money now. DM will get lucky with a FA or two.

I don’t think DM will ever get us that parade, but maybe no one can do that. We’re not too far from a 85-win season. Of course, if he didn’t make so many terrible moves this offseason we could have challenged for 85 wins this year.

At this point, all I want is to be within 5 games in the middle of August. When the farm system starts producing players in a few years, even DM shouldn’t be able to mess things up too badly with dumb FAs. It’s too bad he’s so bad at evaluating FA talent and the market, but our farm system should help us out in a few years.

We just need to be patient. We’ve never heard that before.

But I do see some signs of hope for the future. Maybe I’m just looking too hard. And you might be totally right when you say Dayton might be the guy that’ll keep us from the absolute laughingstock of 2005, but he’ll never get us to the playoffs. Not that that’s a goal to shoot for or anything.

I think you have to look at our pitching as a positive. We’re not as good as the numbers of April, but when’s the last time we’ve had a league average staff? Grienke’s a star. Meche is above league average. Banny and Hooch are going to be around league average. Crow is a year-and-a-half away (hopefully), plus you have other young arms in A-ball or rookie league that have actual talent and weren’t college seniors we drafted because we’re forced to draft someone.

Obviously, our rotation in 2011 isn’t going to be Greinke, Meche, Hooch, Banny and Crow (I hope it is, but someone’s going to get hurt or traded or both). The thing that’s encouraging to me is that we actually have options (now those options might not be MLB ready right now, but they will be in due time).

I guess I’m so beaten down that I’ll take Sample, Melville, Montgomery, Duffy, Rosa, Cortes (even Davies) et al in the minors as a realistic option for the foreseeable future as opposed to Redman or Elarton toeing the slab on Opening Day. I know that not all of those guys are going to make it. But the organizational depth was just so bad for so long that we have to be patient.

I’m truly envious of the Twins and how they take a chance and trade away Garza to get an impact bat. But it’s not really THAT big of a chance because all they have to do is call up Perkins or Blackburn. I’ve got to hold on to the hope that once Dayton gets his pitching in line with where he has realistic options to call up, then he’ll start making some trades to go get a young, impact bat. Maybe those trades will flame out, but I don’t really want to think about that scenario.

I’m also optimistic that Dayton will learn from his mistakes. It’s clear he’s a bit of an impatient shopper (Guillen, Farnsworth, HoRam were all obviously signed before the market revealed their true price tags). A little financial restraint might be in order for the free agent market. But I understand what he was trying to do with the Guillen signing. He wanted an impact bat and outbid only himself for it. I’m not happy about it, but I understand the reasoning.

I also understand what a big mess Dayton was left. Again, not happy about it, but I understand. It’s going to take a few more years of good drafts to get us where we need to be.

To me, that’s honestly probably the most frustrating part of being a Royals fan. If you as an owner don’t want to outspend the Yankees for FAs, I understand that. Not happy about it, but I understand that the playing field isn’t level in that area. But there’s no excuse for not being first-class in building your organizational depth. All of those players are relatively cheap and it’s simply a numbers game. Not only were we an embarrassment on the field for so long, but it’s just so frustratring to have been an absolute embarrassment in the draft and Latin America too. We were just shopping at thrift stores on all levels (not even Wal-Mart, but Salvation Army). Unfathomable that you’d run an organization like that, but at the very least, at least Dayton has gotten the Glasses to start spending some real money in the draft an on scouting.

So there’s my hope for the future. Pitching depth and spending money in the draft. And blind faith. And probably a little bit of naiveity. Or just stupidity. But whatever the reason, I’ll never root for another team.

The Chefs (intentional misspelling) are starting to look more poised to shock the NFL and make the playoffs every day I read more stuff about the Division. And Mizzou, KU, and K-State (Basketball at the least) look poised to have good seasons. At least we have those.

the royals went 10-16 in June, with a slate featuring: CLE, CIN, ARZ, HOU, PIT and a blah STL team

one third place finish & one season over .500

It’s clear that this lineup just plain sucks, and at face value, that Moore has grabbed a bunch of questionable FAs to fill in the holes. However, I think if a couple of things key happened differently this year, we’d all be singing GMDM’s praises about his miracle work and super-human baseball intellect. Those things are as follows:

1. Crisp and Gordon stay healthy and play the majority of the year (a reasonable assumption)
2. Gordon and Butler have break out years and emerge as top-flight hitters (a big assumption, but something we’ve all been anticipating)
3. Aviles doesn’t necessarily repeat his rookie year stats, but reverts to league average (again, reasonable)

Yes, they’re big assumptions (especially #2), but these are all things we were counting on. The lineup is punchless right now, but it was built around assumption #2 above. Those guys emerge as real, consistent threats at the plate, and suddenly 1 through 6 in the lineup (hypothetically, Crisp-Callaspo-Butler-Guillen-Gordon-Jacobs, or something like that) is an intimidating list, not to mention Teahen, DeJesus, Aviles, Olivo, or however things shake out. I don’t want to play the lineup game but I’m just saying that FAs like Jacobs were added as complementary parts based on the above assumptions. If Gordon and Butler become forces to be reckoned with, suddenly guys like Guillen and Jacobs become great role players protecting those hitters, but instead these guys are the focal point of our lineup, with fucking Willie Bloomquist batting 2nd.

Yes, every team deals with injuries, but on a team still working on building organizational depth, enough injuries and enough slower than expected development is just an absolute killer. I agree that Moore hasn’t done all that well on the offensive side, but if some of those things on the list happen, this offense is so much better.

Moore has been lauded for his ability to build pitching depth by picking up guys to fill in at AAA. Guys like Bruce Chen, Ponson, Roman Colon, DiNardo, Luke Hudson, (Bobby Keppel?), etc. to fill in whenever a pitcher goes down to an injury or ineffectiveness. None of the AAA pickups are expected to be world-beaters, but players who can come in and give a slightly above-replacement level performance.

The same can’t be said for hitters though. There have been very, very few hitters picked up – (Brayan Pena and Luis Hernandez are probably the best known). AAA is pretty much a wasteland for replacement level+ hitters outside of Kila (and possibly Thorman), and it’s remained that way for much of Moore’s tenure. He’s known that the draft picks aren’t going to make it to AAA for a few more years, but hasn’t gone about stockpiling the hitting depth with nearly as much emphasis as the pitching. As a result, when a hitter goes down, there’s no one competent ready to take their place.

Then, of the few decent hitters in AAA, none are allowed the opportunity to showcase it at the pros. Brayan over Jacobs/Olivo, Kila over Jacobs, Hernandez over TPJ, Thorman over Jacobs/Maier/JoGui, Shealy over Gload, etc. Aviles over TPJ is the only success story, and only came about because of TPJ’s historically awful season.

So, we’re only left to assume that this is the offense he wants. Which is disturbing.