Royals Review, a Kansas City Royals community

What's the problem? Why are people bitching so much? That's my question. That's my frustration. The problem is people having patience with the process.

I will say that I've been educated about sample sizes and the true value of a player's abilities. If a player has a hot week in October, I don't think that necessarily gives you an idea of his abilities.

Looming in the background, of course, is Willie Bloomquist, who played seven different positions and made just 10 errors despite all the switching around. "He's unbelievable. Willie can do all," Hillman said. "Willie's our ace in the hole. He's one of those guys who'll never get the credit he's due."

"There’s so much to be gained from process," Irvin told me and two Miami radio hosts. "Professional athletics doesn’t have time for process. Athletes are given wealth instantly. We live in a society that used to prepare meals in a process and put them in the oven to bake and now we put things in a microwave and eat right away. We’re into instant gratification. We’ve lost the process. We’ve lost patience."

"Everybody thought we had the greatest offseason in the history of whatever and people in the game were saying we did as good as anybody in improving the team."

Everybody thought. Greatest offseason. History.

Let’s ignore the part about how "people in the game" said the Royals "did as good as anybody in improving the team." This very well may be true. I mean, let’s say there was a guy in your fantasy league who has sucked year after year, whose draft strategy ossified in 1985 and who thinks that Joe Saunders is a first-round pick because he’s won 16 games each of the last two years. If that guy was tired of getting beaten up year after year, and was thinking of leaving the league – or worse, he was thinking about learning what all this hullabaloo about "sabermetrics" and "Moneyball" was about, and asked you for advice, what would you tell him? If you wouldn’t be tempted to pat him on the back and give him a few "attaboys" and tell him that he’s doing great and eventually his luck has to turn, well, you’re a better man than I.

So if Billy Beane or Kenny Williams told Dayton Moore that hey, we love what you did with your roster, and that Mike Jacobs is going to be a huge addition to your lineup and Kyle Farnsworth could be a force in your bullpen, well…let he who wouldn’t have done the same thing in their shoes throw the first stone. I’m fresh out.

John Buck is probably the best free agent option now for catcher. I have no idea why the Royals would let him go while picking up the corpse of Jason Kendall. Teams are still convinced that veteran catchers can have value above and beyond the numbers. The search to quantify that still goes on.

"The bottom line," he said, "is it hasn’t worked here. It hasn’t worked. We have to do what we have to do to shake up our team and generate as much competition as we can. We have to put the pressure on (players) to go out and perform."

A hilarious thing about the movie business is that you can get away with anything as long as you call it "process." Literally, anything. I mean, he's sound asleep! The director is literally sound asleep on set - what the hell's going on here? Well, he's slept through his last three movies, and they were huge hits. It's how he works; that's his "process." He'll wake up at some point and give notes, but for now, let him catch a few Zs. I haven't been in the business that long, but at this point I can't think of a single outrageous behavior that I haven't seen occur on set and then heard excused as someone's process.

I take full responsibility for what's going on... The team's not playing well. Obviously we're not happy with that, but someone has to be held accountable and I accept that responsibility.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with the Braves Way, which (along with the services of three Hall of Fame pitchers) helped Atlanta to 14 division titles. But someone needs to tell Dayton Moore, Dean Taylor, J.J. Picollo, and all the other guys that came over from Atlanta: it’s not 1995 anymore, fellas.... while the rest of baseball is moving forward, the Braves Way seems bent on proving that you can still win with scouts alone. It’s not a coincidence that the Braves themselves have fallen on hard times the last few years, or that the purest distillation of the Braves Way in a single player, Jeff Francoeur, has turned into, well, Jeff Francoeur.