The Culture of Losing Comes from the Culture of Winning

When I was in high school, "Luke" was one of the more popular guys in our school. Girls loved him, and guys wanted to be him. He threw the coolest parties and drove the coolest car. He always had the coolest pre-ripped jeans and went to shows for cool grunge bands I had never even heard of. He was the man.

I ran into him at a bar not long ago. While many of us have gotten fatter or balder, he looked exactly the same. But he looked….odd. Like he didn’t fit in this time period. And he didn’t seem cool anymore. Apparently he still lived by our high school, in an apartment, but he worked for his dad’s landscaping business. He still listened to 1990s bands. I’m not even kidding - he still wore flannel. It was like he had fallen into a crevice in 1996, and was frozen until just now. He was…a loser.

The Royals are the cool guy in high school who never grew up.

They experienced success early on in their history, but this early success calcified their organizational philosophy. They never changed with the times. They never grew up. To paraphrase Nick last week, the Royals learned the wrong lesson from their success.

The Royals were successful early on by being an innovative organization willing to try new things. They developed a team with a strong minor league system with an emphasis on player development. They built a Royals Academy that took unpolished athletes and turned them into professional ballplayers. They realized the park effects of their stadium and built a club tailor-made to Royals Stadium by emphasizing pitching, speed and defense. They took the bold step of locking up key components of the franchise with "lifetime contracts." They were truly forward-thinkers, and much of that credit has to be given to their owner Ewing Kauffman who set the culture for innovation early on.

Once Ewing passed, the Royals’ philosophy was not to continue being an innovative organization looking for the next competitive advantage, it was to look back to the past and try to continue winning as they had done in the 70s and 80s - by emphasizing pitching, speed, and defense and relying almost solely on home-grown talent.

Here is where the Royals ranked in key categories during their hey-day.

Here is where they rank during their era of suck.

The ranks aren’t that much different than from their hey-day. It is pretty clear what they value. And yet the results in the win-loss column are so much different. Why? The game has changed. Ripped-jeans and flannel aren’t cool anymore. You can’t win anymore without getting runners on base and hitting the ball out of the ballpark. That 1985 team the Royals want to emulate so badly? They scored fewer runs than the 91-loss 2011 Royals.

The early Royals relied much on developing homegrown talent. They signed exactly one free agent from 1976-1988. But today, you can't win solely with homegrown talent, you have to be able to spend some money on talent.

The Royals learned the wrong lesson from their success.

Dayton Moore and Ned Yost want to talk about a culture of losing, but the culture of losing in this franchise stems from an unwillingness to let go of the culture of winning from thirty years ago. The Royals are chasing ghosts of the past while a whole new game passes them by. Until they fundamentally change what kind of organization they want to become, the losing will not subside, no matter how many bad attitudes they cut ties with.