To the exclusion of the recent call-ups [it's far too early to grade them one way or the other] the Royals for at least the last 3 decades have been something close to terrible when it comes to developing the players they drafted. But super-small-market Tampa Bay for what seams like close to the last 13 or 14 seasons has found a way field .500 or above teams with the smallest budget in the league. "Player Development" is one of the more amorphous terms utilized in baseball vernacular - it is supposed to say a lot but doesn't convey a single, exact thing or act.

So what is it? What is "it" that Tampa does with such repetition to successfully develop its own players from within that the Kansas City Royals haven't been close to duplicating or adequately mimicking?