I'm not even going to bury the lede on this one.

"We have the largest ballpark in terms of square footage of any ballpark in baseball," Moore says. "When pitchers come here, they have the mindset to use that park -- put the ball in play, throw strikes, attack the zone. There isn't the same fear factor of getting beat deep that you might have elsewhere.

"I think that plays a huge factor in that walk statistic."

-- Dayton Moore, from the FSKC article Royals Continue To Wage The "War On Walks"

The general manager of your baseball team, the one that you know and love, just insulted your intelligence by suggesting that the ability for the Royals roster to draw walks is impeded by the acreage of the ballpark that it plays half of its games in.

In 2006, Allard Baird was run out of this town as an inept, incompetent general manager who couldn't accomplish anything. It was suggested that he was terrible at acquiring major league talent because he couldn't get them to sign here for a substantially below-market price. The Royals themselves were protested by a local radio station on the eve of a potential strike.

Never mind that Baird drafted Zack Greinke, Alex Gordon, and Billy Butler under what would generally be considered "restrictive" financial constraints. Because he couldn't get the job done. The Royals lost 100 games on his watch three times and were well on their way to a fourth when he was let go preceding the 2006 amateur draft. Don't stop to consider that Dayton Moore's draft picks would have to perform at near-Herculean levels over the next six years to match the production of Baird's tenure.

Regardless of what you think of Allard's time with the Royals, the facts speak well enough for themselves: he absolutely did more with less. And here's the other thing: he never made excuses.

Not once do I recall Allard Baird, a GM so scorned and beleaguered that daily missives were writ calling for his expulsion, suggest that the team struggled to perform up to a level appropriate for a major league organization because the stadium prevented them from doing so. But now twice, in the span of roughly thirty calendar days, two different high-ranking members of the organization have suggested or flat-out stated that the Royals lack of offensive production has been a byproduct of the stadium within which they play half of their games.

So where's your vitriol? Where are your torches and 'forks? Because honestly, it is long overdue. This has been an inept outfit for the better part of a decade. They have nary a draft pick to hang their hat on. The greatest accomplishment on Moore's ledger to this point is trading away the best player the last guy drafted. So tell me another one about his development of the farm system, the allocation of resources to Latin America and how they've paid dividends, the new financial freedom that has allowed Dayton to produce a successful team over the last seven seasons.

Because I'm tired of it. And you should be, too.