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Written by Craig Brown
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Tuesday, 25 August 2009 00:25 |
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Posnanski tweet from last night:
I say this with sadness and, frankly, a bit of surprise (considering the past): This is the worst Kansas City Royals team I have ever seen.
I’ve moved past sadness. I’ve moved passed surprise. I was telling friends back in May that this was my least favorite Royals team ever. Ever. Not that I’m some old coot, but I’ve been around as a fan for about 35 years. Obviously, the teams from ’76 to ’85 aren’t going to be hated. The teams from the late ‘80s get a pass as well.
I remember going to a game in April of ’92 when the Royals were in the midst of their worst opening month in franchise history. I was with a friend from college who had no allegiance to the Royals, other than they were the team closest to campus. He spent all game mercilessly going after my team. It was brutal.
Turns out, it was just the beginning.
And now, here we are. Countless losing seasons later. The names have changed, but the results haven't. David Howard, Kevin McReynolds and Wally Joyner have given way to Ryan Freel Josh Anderson, Yuniesky Betancourt and Willie Bloomquist. This team lost in '92 and it's losing in '09. That ’92 team was special, though. They were spectacular in their nothingness. It was just an awful team. It was my least favorite team in the history of the Royals franchise.
Until the 2009 Royals took the field.
There are some serious parallels between the ’92 version and this year’s model. Both had an excellent front line starter (Kevin Appier and Zack Greinke). Both had a young hitter who was showing some promise (Gregg Jefferies and Billy Butler). And both had a quality closer (Jeff Montgomery and Joakim Soria). But that was about it for the bright spots.
Honestly, I didn’t expect much from this ragtag bunch of ballplayers in 2009. However, I didn’t expect to relive 1992.
I’m aware there’s a process that is ongoing. I’m supposed to trust the process. Whatever the hell that means.
As a fan, I’ve been to more games than I can count. And I like to think I’ve hung with them through thick and thin. After all, I love this team. I grew up with them. It’s in my DNA.
I’ve been thinking of Dayton Moore, Trey Hillman and the Glass Family for a long time. I’m sure they are nice enough people. I’m sure they want to have a winner in Kansas City. And I’m sure the losses bother them, too.
But I’m not sure they understand.
I’m not sure they understand what it’s like to watch this team invent new ways to lose every single day. From the atrocious defense, to the bumbling on the bases, to the disaster that is the bullpen, to the anemic offense to the goddamn lack of fundamentals that are on display every single freaking day… They (Moore especially) seem blind to the reality.
Do they understand the toll that this crap is taking on their fanbase?
I had a conversation the other day with a friend of mine who has a son that was born in 1991. In other words, aside from 1993 and 2003, the Royals have had a losing record every year of this kid’s life. Is it any wonder, he’d rather do anything besides go to the ballpark to watch this crap? The kid is almost 20, meaning the Royals have a Lost Generation of kids out there who don’t give a damn about them. Why? Because they haven’t been relevant for 20 years.
Dayton Moore arrived in town a few years ago and was so full of promise. And hope. It was a big job to turn around this franchise. Huge. Mammoth. Nobody expected a quick turnaround. A couple of years of improving win totals made believers out of many.
And now this. 30 games below .500. And as Clark wrote yesterday, once again they are in familiar territory as the laughingstock of baseball.
It's because this team looks like it was assembled by a blind guy with a stack of baseball cards on his table. Just pick a card, any card… Kyle Farnsworth? Sure! Mike Jacobs? Why not? Willie Bloomquist? Yes! I gave up on Moore a long time ago. It’s possible his drafts will yield some fruit, but when Moustakas is taking ground balls off his forehead and Hosmer is sitting out games because he needs glasses, both struggling in A-ball, you just have to laugh. Really. There’s nothing else to do.
Moore has taken a ham-fisted approach to roster building and has created a disaster. He arrived talking of building a team in the mold of the ’85 World Champions. He turned back the clock, for sure. Unfortunately it’s 1992 all over again. The two guys who are performing this year (Greinke and Butler) don’t “belong” to him… They’re leftovers from the previous regime. I’m sure he’s trying to build a better team. I just think we now have plenty of evidence that says he doesn't know how to construct a roster.
Here’s the deal. This isn’t Moore’s team. Or Hillman’s. It’s mine. And yours. All of us who pay for tickets and buy the overpriced merchandise. Those of us who tune into the games on the radio or TV or who follow along on the internet. Whether you’ve been a fan since 1969, or whether you’ve been a fan since 2008. (If you’re a newcomer… What the hell is wrong with you? Seriously, your judgement sucks.)
David Glass, who actually owns the team, has said he's disappointed. Of course, he's said that annually for the last 10 years. Hey, Mr. Glass. If it truly bothers you... DO SOMETHING! I would suggest putting the team up for sale and getting the hell out of town. You're retail acumen has done nothing for this baseball team. It's time you spent your golden years screwing up something else. Why don't you buy the Cardinals?
Anyway… I’m tired of the whole bunch of them. My goal for the rest of the regular season is to pretend Hillman, Moore and Glass don’t exist. I’m going to refrain from mentioning them for the next five weeks. It’s not much. And in the end it doesn’t really matter. But in my mind, they’ve ceased to exist. I will get in a few more digs over the next hundred or so words, but after today… That’s it.
END RANT
-- Anyone notice Dayton Moore doing a little backpeddling on the Alex Gordon demotion?
Here’s what he said on the day Gordon was shipped to Omaha:
"He'll go down there until the Triple-A season is completed.”
Of course, everyone who could count to 20 quickly figured out what that meant for Gordon and his service time. Then, here’s what GMDM had to say over the weekend:
“Of course there’s that chance (that Gordon could return before Omaha’s season ends on September 7.) We’ll evaluate it. I don’t put any timelines on when a player is going to return when they get sent down. Never have.”
I guess part of The Process is double-talk.
-- Within the article where GMDM contradicted himself was the information that Jose Guillen could return when the rosters expand on September 1. Last year, I defended the guy when everyone was piling on, saying I didn’t care about his attitude, as long as he performed.
Now, I just view the guy as a contract who’s tied the hands of his organization. The sooner he’s gone, the happier I’ll be.
-- So the long-awaited bullpen move came on Monday when the Royals DFAd Ron Mahay and recalled Yosh Yabuta from Omaha.
The Royals bullpen has a 6.38 ERA since the All-Star Break. Dreadful. Yet the worst offender - Roman Colon - is still with the team.
Nah, Mahay hasn’t been good, either. It just seems curious the Royals would keep Colon ahead of Mahay if, as Hillman says, the Royals are still trying to win ballgames. Sure, I understand the whole process, where Colon would have to clear waivers to go to Omaha as he’s out of options. But didn’t the Royals put him on waivers earlier this month anyway? I’m thinking he wasn’t claimed then. He probably wouldn’t be claimed now.
The delusion continues when it comes to the Royals evaluating their personnel.
-- The Josh Anderson misplay of the Span base hit and subsequent “throw” will enter the pantheon of great Royal miscues of this decade. It’s up there with the Ken Harvey relay in the back, the Terrance Long assumed catch and the Kerry Robinson jump at the wall.
Breathtaking.
While I celebrate the awfulness of the play, I do have some empathy for Anderson. He’s primarily a center fielder and isn’t used to running into corners for balls that are slicing away from him. I’ll hang part of the blame on SABR Trey.
-- Joel Goldberg (who’s excellent on the Royals broadcasts, by the way) had an interesting nugget during the game regarding the Royals and the Wizards cross-promotion that is currently happening. (I don’t know the details. It’s something about buy a ticket to the Royals, get a Wizard ticket for free. My question is, why would you torture yourself twice? I’m a soccer fan, but the MLS kind of blows.) Anyway, some of the Royals went to a Wizard workout on Monday morning and took some penalty kicks. Billy Butler showed up, but didn’t participate… because he wore flip-flops.
I love Billy Butler. And I love Zack Greinke.
The rest of them can go jump in a lake.
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Comments
I'm glad you called your piece a rant cause thats what it was!
I love watching Willie Bloomquist & for that matter the awfull Jacobs has improved of late!
The current problem is a bullpen one with the seedlings of problems in the rotation & poor defence
Yes the front office is a mess & at times full of contradictions but to say Joel Goldberg is excellent just blows your credibility out of the water,the guy is like a redundent weatherman with no real purpose
Whenever i watch other broadcasts from the US his slot is normaly allocated to serious baseball analysis not repetitive meaningless trivia!
Quote:
Love it.
Great article but got to agree with % (intheUK) I can't stand Joel Goldberg or the most of the FSN guys for that matter. The radio is were it's at lol.
% - Were you ever able to register from the main page?
Gordon - Excellent point! Maybe the Royals can steal the Wizards goal keeper for defensive purposes. It would be nice to have someone on this team who knew how to use their hands.
One thing i dont understand is if you have so much distrust in the front office & "the process",how can you have any time at all for FSN or any of the broadcasters except Frank White (who apart from being a many times over gold glover hasnt been a broadcaster long enough to be contaminated) cause they are part of the process you object too?
There sycophancy is nauseating & they are symmetrical with the Royals & are a public mouth piece in terms of public relations of the very system you object to in your writing!
And don't confuse the fact I like Goldberg on the broadcasts with an endorsement of the entire radio/tv crew. More often than not, I have the game on "mute." It's better for my fragile state of mind.
Remember, the local broadcasters are employed by the team. So, if you're looking for criticism (in other words, truth) you're not going to get it from them.
I understand the frustrations. I grew up as a Cubs fan in the 70s and 80s. Although there were a couple of "out of nowhere" years where the team was competitive there was never any reason to expect a sustained run of success. I followed the team for nearly a decade before the the 84 season and the trade of Joe Carter was a dagger in the heart of the future for the franchise- they sold a decade away for one season. At least Moore hasn't done that yet.
With that prologue, I’ll stand up as a Moore apologist on a few counts:
There is a fifteen year culture of losing with this franchise. Moore’s primary player acquisitions [Crisp, Jacobs] were guys who might not have been the statistically sexiest players going but had good reputations as clubhouse guys and had played for winners. He was trying to bring some leadership in which was obviously sorely lacking last year.
As a corollary of the point above once this team started to go into the tank, it couldn’t find a way to dig itself out of the hole- part of the culture I referred to above. It’s telling that when Crisp’s performance had peaked, the Royals were 18-15 and tied for first with Detroit, having started the annual May slide. If I was saying “here we go again” you know they were thinking it. The slide paralleled Crisp's declining health and I believe the two are correlated. Feel free to disagree but it feels to me like inside the clubhouse they knew the season was ending on that California road trip: the losses were coming in, Gordon was already out, Crisp was falling apart and Aviles was a shell of his former self.
Moore is surprised that the team isn’t playing as well as expected. So is everyone in the fanbase. So that’s hardly a legitimate complaint. And if he wasn’t surprised, do you think he’d come out and say “Well, we weren’t really trying to put a competitive product on the field, so I’m not stunned at the way the season has turned out”?
As for the Cortes trade- don’t you think that maybe PART of the desire to move him was because he had two alcohol-related incidents? Maybe he was talented but undisciplined [repeatedly battling control issues...maybe a sign of not taking coaching?] so Moore figured that he’d never reach his potential? You might accuse me of making suppositions, but there’s entirely too much reliance on statistical analysis sometimes. This isn’t PlayStation baseball- the front office and the players are people and all too often if we can’t measure something we ignore it, so the suppositions go both ways. In any event, I think part of that trade was sending a message to minor league players that their conduct matters. I'll concede that Betancourt is horrible but there's more to that deal than meets the eye.
At least we’ve seen some signs that the team is getting it- Butler has started at 1B and St. Willie would never have gotten the ABs that Gloady did except for the injuries. Pena was finally DFAd and Trey showed the ability to extend Soria out to two innings despite some justified, yet oddly rationalized fears. I'm aggravated at the franchise's unwillingness to play lower-ceiling, older minor leaguers [Brazell, Kia] in place of known MLB quantities but Moore was trying to bring experienced players in who could help teach the club how to win.
This franchise is not going to be rebuilt overnight. As a rule, it’s much easier to destroy than to build. The process that everyone is so fond of mocking isn’t happening at the big league level except as an attempt to build a new culture. I truly believe that part of the process was damaged by injuries for two reasons: it allowed the attitude to slide back into a “woe is us” mode and it has left Alex Gordon’s career in limbo.
Kevin Keitzman said something yesterday on his show about Todd Haley and the Chiefs that the Royals need to run with: for too long, the Chiefs paid players to play in the NFL. Now the players are getting paid to win in the NFL.
Maybe the only way to get the culture turned around is to blow up the roster, I don't know, but as it stands right now, Moore’s fortunes are tied to his first two drafts. He might have served himself better by taking players that were closer to major league but he didn’t so we are still waiting- at least two more years until we know for sure what we really have. Next year will be telling in their development, especially Moose and Hosmer. If he’s got the scouting eye that we’ve been led to believe then there’s a chance.
Finally, if Moore fails-or worse, is canned before we have a chance to see if he can succeed- do you really think that Glass is going to hire the next Theo Epstein?