As we traverse through the annual September Royals' equivalent of the "surge" in Iraq that leads the front office to undue optimism for 2010, let's take a reflective but proactive lens back in time through the Dayton Moore era (June 2006-present) and take part in a fun exercise.

You are a more humble, self-aware GMDM.  You wake up in the morning and realize that you've created a mess and your franchise is in shambles at the MLB level.  Miraculously, the baseball gods, as gritty and dirt-stained as ever, take mercy on you and allow you to travel back in time to undo one of your decisions for each year of your tenure, assuming that you know all that you do about the franchise now.  What do you decide to do to strengthen the long-term health of the franchise? 

I'll go first to get this started:

2006: I do not trade J.P. Howell for Joey Gathright. 

Rationale:  Really a no brainer.  This is the move GMDM made in 2006 that significantly hurt the team.  Gathright didn't do much of anything well during his time in KC, including stealing bases.  Howell would look awfully nice in the Royals bullpen right now and would just be coming up on arbitration eligibility. 

2007: I do not name Alex Gordon my opening day starting 3B and stash him in Omaha for 200-300 PA's (roughly until the MLB All-Star break). 

Rationale: Anointing Gordon the starting 3B before a single PA in AAA was a mistake in retrospect.  He looked lost at the plate for the first half of the season and has not lived up to his potential since.  Keep in mind that he was the unanimous #1 prospect in baseball at the time, and as the Royals had Mark Teahen to play third there was really no reason to rush him.  It's a tough call - maybe Gordon would neither fix the holes in his swing that were so apparent at the time nor give any sign in AAA that he would initially struggle at the MLB level, but you have to wonder 'what if' here given the aggressive approach and the pressure of initial expectations.   

The Guillen signing and hiring of Trey Hillman are tied for a close second here, and as flawed as those moves have played out over the past two years I truly believe that the lack of devleopment from Gordon has had a more signifcant long-term negative effect on the franchise.

2008:  I darft Buster Posey with the third pick instead of Eric Hosmer.

Rationale: Picking Hosmer wasn't exactly a popular move at the time given his excessive bonus demands and the fact that there were numerous cheaper, polished, close to MLB-ready college-power bats available for the taking with the third-pick in the draft, including Posey, a catcher out of Florida State, Justin Smoak a first-baseman out of South Carolina, and Yonder Alonso, a first-baseman out of Miami. 

It's hard to judge Hosmer after only a year, but his first season of professional baseball was particularly unimpressive (.241/.334/.361 combined between low A and high A).  Posey, meanwhile, wasted no time in tearing up both AA and AAA (.325/.416/.531) and rigthfully earned a September call-up to the Giants.  Hosmer could still end up being the superior player but it's unlikely for him to even sniff the Majors until 2011 at the earliest.  Posey's position of catcher, meanwhile, is one position where the Royals farm-system is incredibly thin, and Olivo, Buck, and Brayan Pena are not even close to long-term solutions for the position.

2009: Incomplete, mission unaccomplished.

Rationale: We'll have to wait to see how the offseason plays out, but not trading MLB-level talent for prospects at the trade deadline is inexcusable to me.  Even worse, there was no indication from the front office that they were really trying all that hard to shop their MLB players. Oh, I will admit their hands were tied to a certain extent as they have few viable trading chips other than DeJesus, Teahen, Soria and Bannister.  But really, whose fault is it that Yasuhiko Yabuta, Ron Mahay, Kyle Farnsworth, and Jose Guillen have such toxic contracts as to be untradeable in the first place?  Oh my goodness, duh...I need to look deeper into my soul and judge this franchise on something bigger than wins and losses!  How silly of me.  Well, how about judging the franchise on how well it jettisons sunk costs to prepare for a brighter future? 

The bottom line is:  I refuse to believe that a Mark Shapiro or Billy Beane would not have figured out some way to cut ties with the present big-league pieces, regardless of present value, for players of potential value to the franchise in the future.   Dayton took the opposite approach and traded prospects for Yuniesky Betancourt, and the #10 prospect in the organization in Danny Gutierrez for two fringe prospects.  Neither trade  sense at the time and although more information has come to light with Gutierrrez regarding attitude and lifestyle problems, the timing and execution still seem sloppy.  

The sad thing is, there is still plenty of time left in 2009 for Dayton to screw this one up even more.