Poll: Should Dayton Moore Be Fired Right Now?

For reasons we already know. His evaluation of major league players the past two seasons has been awful.

The only strength is that Glass started spending money on amateur talent and PD when DM arrived, and I assume this would continue if DM was fired.

into the sun

Before he ruins this team for another decade by trading all our good players for crap.

But I didn’t feel good about it.

GMDM has done SOME good in his time w/ KC.

Meche signing
Getting Greinke signed a month before he channeled Bob Gibson
Increased spending in the draft
Increased spending Internationally
Trading for Bannister
Picking up Ram-Ram
Signing Soria long term to a very team friendly contract

But that being said, we all know his bad points too.

Signing Ho-Ram
Jacobs
Getting rid of Ram-Ram (though I didn’t hate that trade when it happened, and I think if Crisp hadn’t gotten hurt it could have worked out well)
Trading for Yuni
et all

The thing that I keep coming back to is that his WORST moves BY FAR were made last off-season and this season. I can’t help but wonder if Ownership is meddling in what he is doing now. Giving him the typical, “Where’s the results?” talk, and demanding improvements be made at the MLB level ASAP.

I dunno. Maybe I’ll get labelled as a GMDM apologist, and I don’t want that. I think his disregard for OBP, despite strong rhetoric saying the opposite is laughable. But the fact that the vast majority of his shitty moves came right before or during the season which we move into the “New” K. It looks to me like ownership wanted him to gut things to bring in players that they thought would sell tickets…

is that he is good, not great, regarding pitchers… but utterly horrible with position players

And let someone else take the GM reigns.

and I say so not because of the stuff GoBabies said but because he has surrounded himself with some good people. If he takes a good hard look at the team he built I think its possible that a rational individual will make changes, maybe he will even surround himself with more good people.

I guess it comes down to the fact that the stuff he has done organization wide is a wash with the stuff he has done at the major league level. I think he deserves another shot purely because of what he has accomplished drafting wise.

He has made a lot of bad, head-scratching moves in his time here, but he has also made a few good moves also. And. lets face it, it would take a very good- great GM to win here. At this point, DM doesnt even look like an average GM, but that all could change if he continues to improve our minor league system. I think he deserves another year or two to see if the farm system he has assembled can push this team towards contention.

All along, 2010 has been the target year for contention, so I believe it would be worthless to fire him before next year, even though he has not done a very good job so far.

Due to the fact Moore keeps signing our crappy leftovers. (HoRam, Guillen, Olivo, Yuni, Bloomquist), I’d like to see him fired. KC deserves better.

As said above, for his COMPLETE inability at evaluating/acquiring MLB level offensive players.

On the “no” side., it just “feels” too early (now I"m talking like a on of Dayton’s “top people.”), he hasn’t been here long.

ON the “yes” side, I’m convinced that there are many, many people in the industry who could come in and do a far, far, better job that Dayton is, even starting now.

One issue with the latter is if this would be good timing during the season, or wait until the offseason.

The final issue is whether the poll is asking as if I were the owner, or just a fan. If the former, I would say “yes,” because as owner I would make sure the timing was right, then put together a group of trusted people (who actually know about baseball) and find a good guy to put together a team in a non-traidtional style (a la Tampa Bay, perhaps) — so the “GM” would be more like a club president, in that sense.

But if the Glasses are assumed to be in charge… wel,l it gets more complicated. Dayton was a good candidate, seemingly, and one gets the feeling the knew to hire him because he brought prestige with him. Would they be smart enough, if Dayton were fired (whenever) to find someone better? I don’t know. Worse — would they cut the budget back to a quasi-Marlins level (but without the F.O. with the smarts of the Marlins, Rays, or the current Pirates F.O.)

I wanted to vote yes, but he deserves whatever credit is available for the expanded budget in the draft, minor leagues, and payroll. One more off-season full of overpriced shitty players and I’ll gladly flip on this issue.

I work for the Kansas City, Missouri School District, an organization that makes the Royals look like a well oiled machine. The analogy I always use to describe the change in Superintendents (GM/Manager) is asking people what it would look like if a major league baseball team like the Royals changed GMs every 18-36 months. It’s not that it isn’t okay to make a change, but the danger of making multiple changes in a small amount of time without allowing any sort of plan develop is doomed to failure. Any Superintendent coming in will have their own philosophy (may it be a canned curriculum program or the lust for extra fast sub-.300 oba pieces of grit), which will inherently cause a complete re-organization of personnel. You have now put yourself 3 years (at the minimum) of having a reliable and valid chance of having success AND you have put yourself 3 years (at the minimum) of even being able to evaluate if you have a quality person running your organization. If you’re going to make a change, you’d better be bringing in the holy fucking messiah, because otherwise you most likely will be having this same conversation in 18-36 months from your change in leadership.

….and the position players we have in the system have, for the most part, regressed. Sure, there has been Kila, but come on! He’ll be a San Diego Padre next year. Lough has probably been his best pick in terms of actual production/results, and although I’m excited about it, he still won’t be an A prospect even if he keeps this pace simply due to the lack of pure power numbers.

And those pitchers we have dominating and/or pitching effectively in the low minors? Expect one or two of those to regress and one or two more to be turned into Willy Pierre.

Also, there’s the mysterious and progressive regressing of our system annually.

I believe in the 5 year term, what would give me confidence is bold no bullshit moves dare I say oldschool moves. Trading JoGui (eating his damn salary) and get a couple low level prospects with upside, dumping Jacobs, dumping people that aren’t performing sending a message that players need to perform or pack.

I’m shocked that the voting is as close as it is.

We should try to be a bit less reactionary than your standard RBIs and Wins fan.

Yeah, Dayton sucks in a lot of ways, and his personality has become rather off-putting. But fire him right now? Leaving aside the idea that firing any GM right before the trade deadline is a terrible idea (since that’s not really the intent of the question), I still feel like this would need to be handled a) in a more delicate manner, and b) in the offseason, please.

Also, for whatever reason I don’t have the fear that Dayton will screw up the team inexorably in the next year or two. Trading for the Betancourts and Freels of the world is stupid and wasteful, but it’s not going to destroy the team. It’s not as if he’s trading Meche for relief prospects and signing Olivo to an $8MM/year extension. Letting Dayton stick around a little longer isn’t going to set us back as far as replacing him right now with an unknown probably would.

(This pertains to Moore’s trading of bullpen arms and “re-stocking” of that area)….but one glaring old-school quality of mine is that a bullpen can make a world of difference in the outcome of a season. Proper implementation of that bullpen can go further. How many games would the Royals be with Boston’s bullpen and proper implementation of that ’pen (i.e. usage of situational lefties which, IMO, are important, in addition to stretching out of the closers role or even abandonment altogether). With a team that plays many close games (i.e. bad offense, good starting pitching – like us!)….that can make a 70-win team an 85-win team. Yeah. I said it.

The Royals are contending at AA, High A and one of their rookie short season clubs. He has hired some very good front office talent in Arbuckle and the guy who built up the Milwaukee farm system (sorry, I am blanking on his name). The Royals are finally competing for some of the international players.

He signed a solid pitcher in Meche and got an all star closer through rule 5 in Soria.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think the Royals are that far away from contending.

With Greinke, Meche, Hochevar, Bannister there is a solid core of starters that could be spectacular. They have the closer, and both Rosa and Hayes are interesting AAA relievers.

Billy Butler is turning into the hitter they thought he would be and is doing better defensively than thought. Alex Gordon IMO will be a very good 3rd baseman.

DDJ is a solid outfielder. Teahen can cover just about any position that the Royals have a weakness except short.

Aviles will provide Betancourt and/or Callaspo competition next year. Bianchi will be up in 2011.

Mahay and Yabuta’s contracts are up this year. Cut or trade Jacobs. Cut or trade either Olivo or Buck and use Pena as your second catcher.

They need more speed at CF, SS and 2nd – they should be able to address at least one of those positions in the off-season.

The bad news is that Betancourt, Guillen and Farnsworth will all be on the roster next year, but it will be their last year (or does Betancourt have another year?). I am more familiar with football than baseball, but it always seems to me that players do better in their last contract year.

Hire a stats guy who would be willing to serve as G.M. for a historically low salary (relative to era).

He has done some really good things

He has done some really strange things

Many players out of his control have come up short, got hurt, ect.

Let’s let this play out until he can't put together a bullpen with shoe string and bubble gum

wait, ok, let it ride for two more years until the farm system can actually start putting people in, and HE ACTUALLY DOES IT