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May
24

PRO Rumors Editorial: Making Sense of The Process

By Kevin

In a recent PRORumors story a GM was quoted as saying, “it makes no sense to make a managerial change. What this says is, they’re trying to salvage the season.”

Well, there hasn’t been a whole lot that has made sense in the era of Dayton Moore as GM of the Royals.

The firing of Trey Hillman, while possibly a necessity, really amounts to – as others have pointed out – just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. No manager could possibly be expected to win with a roster full of past-their prime 30-somethings on bad contracts. What’s worse, is this broken roster comes smack in the middle of what should be a youth movement intended on setting the Kansas City franchise up for contending years to come.

The first day Dayton Moore was hired as GM he talked about there not being excuses. There aren’t excuses for a team to not play fundamental baseball. There aren’t excuses for a franchise to have a losing record for 15 of the last 16 seasons. There aren’t excuses of payroll limitations and the hardships that a market like Kansas City has to deal with, to compete.

And now, four years later, Dayton Moore is full of excuses.

For the past 8 to 12 months fans of Kansas City have had to hear about how bad the minor leagues were once Moore took over. Things have started to turn around now, if you don’t consider that they haven’t already fully turned.

Mike Moustakas is hitting, Mike Montgomery is pitching, and Derrick Robinson is stealing bases and getting on base enough to make a team stuck in their 1980s philosophy swoon.

But those prospects are still in AA and won’t be ready to help the Royals for at least another year.* So while this year’s version of The Process spirals towards yet another 100-loss season, perhaps it may be time for the GM, you know the guy picking the players, to be accountable for the losing more so than the manager that was merely cooking with the ingredients given.

*Recently Moore said that it takes 2-4 years for a player to make the majors once they were drafted, and another 2-4 to find their place in majors. Now aside from openly telling your group of major league players currently on the roster “hey sorry guys, but you have to wait another four years for this team to really be any good,” I think it’s pretty clear that some players don’t need 2-4 years to make it in the majors, just players that play for an organization looking for excuses.

It makes no sense to have expected Hillman to win with this roster. Yes the former manager is to blame for a number of things like ruining a $55 million pitcher, ignorantly calling for sacrifice bunts, and his overall confusing ways of speech.

But it’s not Hillman that decided a guaranteed 2-year deal for more than $6 million to a 36-year-old catcher – that hasn’t been good since freaking 2004 – was a good idea. It’s not Hillman that promised centerfield to Rick Ankiel even though a) he can’t play it and b) no one else wanted him to play it. It’s not Hillman that traded for possibly the worst everyday player in baseball in Yuniesky Betancourt.

The list goes on of head-scratcher moves that have been made in the tenure of Dayton Moore.

Fans understand it takes time to win especially given where the Royals are trying to come back from. They do.

What they don’t understand is how a GM can routinely spout with arrogance and defiance to trust The Process, when The Process clearly seems to be saying that it’s right to overpay for below-average old players while burying equally productive and much cheaper players in AAA. (Here’s looking at you Alex Gordon and Kila Ka’aihue)

There’s a lot of talk being spent defending The Process. There’s a lot of talk about how keeping players like Jose Guillen and Joakim Soria and Scott Podsednik on the team this year actually does make sense because it allows those players in the minors to stay there and develop. But the next time you hear or read about how the fans should be patient with Moore because he’s building through the minor leagues and what he’s doing does make sense, just remember, he’s also the guy that gave Willie Bloomquist $3 million.

Categories : editorial