Trey Hillman and Dayton Moore have lectured us all season. Their mistakes, we’ve been repeatedly told, are actually our mistakes. Their failings, we’ve been repeatedly told, are really just our failings. See, the fans and the media have both a moral and an intellectual shortcoming: we’re too impatient and we’re too dumb. Since this summer, the Royals have consistently pushed a bizarre social criticism on the public, claiming that Americans are too into instant gratification, which has poisoned our abilities to fully appreciate all the great progress they’ve made with the Royals.
...Dayton Moore and Trey Hillman are both, essentially, rookies. They are rookies at their current level of employment. This is not to say that they may not be great General Managers and Managers someday, but it is to acknowledge that, at present, they have not, as they say, done anything at their current level. They need to hold the Alex Gordon mirror up to themselves. The unfounded arrogance of team management in the past year has been absolutely stunning, and I’m not the only one to notice it. On and off the record, just about anyone close to the team has remarked about the siege mentality that’s taken over, and that mentality is driven by an unwillingness to take criticism or even acknowledge slight mistakes.
...And before we go, here’s another thing. Draft better. Draft better and make better trades. Actually adhering to your supposed process would be nice. The next time you want to trade away arms for old, expensive, bad players, don’t do it. Getting a fat budget and drafting completely predictable players in the early rounds is not exactly brilliance. Its a good strategy, but stop parading your process so much when, and this might hurt, a dude with a Baseball America subscription could have done the same thing. Bring us some late-round guys that emerge. Prove to us how smart you are. The Royal system, which has been overhauled since 2006, is still weak. There have been hits and there have been misses, but three drafts in, there’s still a lot of uncertainty.
Repoz
Posted: October 08, 2009 at 10:57 AM |
22 comment(s)
|
Login to Bookmark
Related News:
General,
Kansas City
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
Compare that with teams past of even the brief flirtation with the Red Sox - I knew Ellsbury, Lowrie and Sanchez were average to good MLB players the first few times I saw them. I don't get that feeling with the Baby Royals prospects and haven't since the early 2000s.
Ken Harvey and Norris Hopper spoiled me, I guess. Not even the side arming Rowdy Hardy express could change it.
edit: What is that, like 47 billion dollars of payroll for those 4?
Because nobody likes fanboys of frontrunners. And really what kind of insight are we going to gain from somebody who writes about the Yankees? Hey we should get the best player in the game. Ta-da! We did. We should do it again. Ta-da! We did. About the only writer for a good team that got some love from the sabes is Goldman and Goldman's work mostly dealt with all the little things the Yanks did wrong or all the cliches that their announcers and coaches and writers spouted. We all like to play GM and it is easier to point at what is wrong and say how we would do it right. There was an onion headline from a couple of days ago that I chuckled at that applies here. "New High School alumni makes successful use of Vague Graduation Advice"
A true artist must suffer, and the Royals excels at causing pain.
EDIT: Oh yeah, coke to #2, originality is overrated.
The Stephen Stills effect. When Stills was in turmoil, he wrote some fine songs. When he was happy, he wrote terrible ones...
Bill Simmons started going downhill after 2004.
They can coddle Farnsworth and hope he puts up good small sample size numbers by the All-Star break. Jacobs might have another fluke season and get dumped like Aubrey Huff. They're stuck with the other two.
I could envision a scenario where Guillen ends up with the Mets but yeah, they're stuck.
Unless the team thinks that they can either (a) platoon Guillen or (b) play Guillen in RF.
Guillen as a DH is gonna suck, but it's their only real option.
As far as making the playoffs, which is WAY too important for the local ballclub, that's simply the beauty of the split season.
Sometimes the material can stay the same, but the circumstances differ.
That's certainly true. I haven't kept up with him lately but I've been enjoying his basketball columns far more than his Red Sox ones.
I'm pretty down on Hosmer and Moose, but I do think Duffy and Montgomery have quite a bit of potential. Of course, Jimmy Gobble and Chris George put up really good numbers at that level too. David Lough looks like a poor man's David DeJesus. Jeff Bianchi could go in a lot of different directions. He's gone from terrific prospect, to injury-prone, to bust, to back on the radar in a short career. He could be Ben Zobrist, he could be Jed Hansen, hard to say.
If you thought Lowrie was an average to good MLB player the first time you saw him then I seriously doubt your abilities to judge prospects and must therefore assume that the Royals have some pretty good ones.
(I say that half seriously, half tongue-in-cheek.)
That's an awful ballpark for hitters, though.
Hosmer just turned 20 and has played in two tough places for hitters, plus he's being pushed pretty hard. I still think he's going to be pretty good eventually, although he's going to have to start showing it soon. Moustakas's numbers in context aren't bad at all.
-- MWE
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main