"I'm responsible. It's all on me." -GMDM. Really?

Five years ago, Dayton Moore gave Trey Hillman his first of two public votes of confidence. That day, Craig Calcaterra wrote the following:

If you have to point to a guy who has sunk this team — as opposed to say the Fates or Karma or whatever — that guy is Dayton Moore. Which makes one wonder, by the way, how much a vote of confidence from a GM who himself deserves to be fired is really worth.

This week, Moore is back in the news telling FOX's Jeffrey Flanagan he "believes [Ned] Yost is the manager who can get the Royals to the playoffs this season."

Look again at the quote from Calcaterra up there. If I hadn't told you it was five years old, couldn't it have been written today, about Yost, not Hillman? Five years later, we're still doing this dance. Is this the Vote of Confidence that buys Ned another season as manager, or the one that leaves him unemployed? We don't know yet, but Moore is switching things up this time with a new step - saying it's his fault.

"It's my job to give the managers and the coaching staff the right players to succeed. I have to be able to give them the tools to win. So if we're not succeeding, ultimately the responsibility comes back to me. No one else."

Those are nice words. Those are the kinds of words that could have been said at any point of The Process, rather than the times we've been told to be patient, been told we can't be educated, been told we're too critical. But if the team doesn't improve substantially - from where they are, and even from where they finished in 2013, the new words can be added to the same trash heap as all the others.

And if indeed, the team doesn't improve, who will be accountable then? And what will that accountability look like? Our friend Justin Bopp twote that by saying the things he said, Moore "put his neck on the line following this season." I'm not so sure.

When Frank White spoke honestly about the state of the team, accountability looked like Moore publicly humiliating White and firing him. When the 2010 pitching rotation was Zack Greinke and then a void, accountability looked like giving Hillman a vote of confidence and then firing him the next day. When Kevin Seitzer had the gall to be a human coach, and not a wizard, accountability looked like firing him, and hiring someone who would be on the job exactly one year, before Moore had to show accountability for his own player acquisition skills by firing him, too.

So I beg your pardon for not believing so much that GMDM thinks any of this is the fault of GMDM. This blame-shifting has been working out pretty well so far; why change now? Be Royal, dammit.