Revisiting the Sports Illustrated BFSE Article. (Part 1)

by Jack Marsh on Jan 23, 2012 12:36 AM EST

While making a collage for art class, I stumbled across this article from the midst of the "BEST FARM SYSTEM EVUHHH" hype. It's titled "Royals, Flush", and it's by Joe Posnanski.

So, I wanted to get a couple points out of the way before we delve into the text of the article.

1: On the front page of the article, there is a collage with several Royals prospects. I'm pretty sure this was the 2011 BA top 10. I noticed that Brett Eibner and Christian Colon were on the list. I also noticed that 4 of the 10 players on the list had advanced to the majors (Danny Duffy, Salvador Perez, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Moustakas). I found it pretty cool that the Royals have still managed to have a top farm system with all of these flops and graduations to the majors (although I think that Salvador Perez still qualified for the 2012 list).

2: In the sub-text under the title, I noticed that it said for the Royals to "Just wait four years" before getting good. After reading this article (again), I think that I now realize that a lot of us were getting ahead of ourselves and probably need to wait until next year-3 more years before we actually did something. Mellinger just threw us off with all of the "Mission: 2012" talk, and I think that this is proof that we are getting WAY too excited for the youth movement.

So, now that that is out of the way, let's get into the article itself.

"Believe it or not, the Royals used to be terrible. No, kids, It's true. Yes, you have to go back a few years. You have to go back to those crazy days before Mike Moustakas started clubbing home runs, before Eric Hosmer won batting titles, before Wil Myers and Mike Montgomery and John Lamb all became household names."

The intriguing thing about this is that it all could still happen. We have 5+ years of team control on all of these players, and we may still see Mike Montgomery and John Lamb figure things out. We could see Moustakas lead the league in homers. We could see Hosmer win multiple batting titles. It all could still happen.

"You have to go back, in fact, to 2011. The Royals were dismal that year. They were also dismal the year before that and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that and... well, you get the idea."

So, we were dismal in 2011. It's funny because we weren't exactly dismal in 2011. That is encouraging.

"The biggest problem (we are talking about the 3-time champion Royals), was that Kansas City had trouble finding, developing, and affording good players."

The "affording" part was what really hit me. It's obvious that the Royals had trouble finding and developing good players (Well, besides Butler, Gordon, and Grienke). But can we afford to lock up our good players and get good FA talent? I think that the Royals will still see increased revenue before it's time to sign Hosmer/Moose/whoever else we need to sign to extensions.

"How did it turn around? How did the Royals reach the playoffs in 2013, win the World Series in '15 and dominate the latter part of the decade?"

Once again, we see that the Real target date here is 2013. 2011 was where the offense stepped up. 2012 is where the pitching steps up. 2013 is where it all comes together. 2014-16 is a reasonable target date for winning the World Series. Who knows what they'll do in "the latter part of the decade"?

"Well, it was that minor league system... that amazing Kansas City Royals minor league system."

BEST FARM SYSTEM EVAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH.

Well, that was part one. Part two should be out in the next 3-4 days, and it will cover page two of the article.