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This was written before the Royals went homer crazy against the Tigers on Tuesday night and bumped their winning percentage a shade above .400.
Another day, another excuse from the lovable Kansas City Royals.
This is the latest gem from Trey Hillman.
“I don’t think all of the factors have been evaluated fairly. It all goes back to what we all get judged on — wins and losses — because that’s what counts in our world and in our culture of immediate satisfaction and what have you done for me today. There’s a lot that goes into (evaluating an organization).”
He’s just following the organizational talking points. Here’s Dayton Moore last week:
“In our immediate-gratification society, everybody wants to point fingers. But from what I’ve seen from everything that goes on in this organization, Trey Hillman’s leadership is one of the strengths of our organization.”
Apparently, the Royals have now moved on and are now blaming society for their problems this year. That means MTV, video games, fast food and anything else that is the root cause of short attention spans and instant gratification is to blame. That’s because we want to use wins and losses as a measuring stick of progress. How silly we must be to think like that. Of course, it’s not all our fault. Society is really to blame.
Unreal.
(Do you know who doesn’t measure success by wins and losses? First grade soccer players. They don’t keep score at all. Maybe Dayton Moore would be happy if we could just get him some orange slices.)
Personally, I think the Royals collective front office perception of the fan is extremely detached from reality. I could be completely wrong about this, but I get the feeling all we want to see is improvement. We want to see a better product on the field from year to year. And we do use wins and losses as the main tool to evaluate performance. Why? Because it’s what the game is all about.
This was something I’ve wondered about at times over the last couple of seasons… How do we measure progress? We hit some intense lows in this decade. We all know about the one time this team finished over .500. There have also been five seasons where the Royals have posted a sub .400 winning percentage. That’s counting the current season where the Royals are currently at .399 and on pace for 97 losses.
Anyway, since Dayton Moore rode in on his white horse from Atlanta to rescue us, the team has shown improvement. Of course, that’s if you just look at the wins and the losses. Since bottoming out in 2005 and prior to 2009, the Royals increased their winning percentage for three straight years. And Moore has been the General Manager of the Royals for two and a half of those seasons.
Rarely, does a plan go smoothly. There will be bumps and detours along the way. I thought this was especially true regarding the Royals. They had such a long way to go… Not every team can pull a Detroit where they lose 119 games and play in the World Series in a span of two years time. That’s not the norm, and I think the majority of baseball fans realize this. With the Royals resources and the state of the organization back in 2005, it was always going to be a long haul back to respectability. A process, if you will.
I thought this was going to be one of those “bump” years. Just looking at the assembled team, it was obvious the Royals were going to have a difficult time improving on last year’s .463 winning percentage. However, I thought they would at least come close. I was thinking they’d end up somewhere around .450, which would have put them roughly three wins worse than last season. I think that qualifies as a “bump.”
However, what’s happened this year has been a total and complete disaster.
I know Dayton Moore and Trey Hillman don’t want to be judged on wins and losses. Of course, they only say that because there aren’t enough wins and far too many losses. Sorry, but that’s a load of crap.
Hillman insists this is an improved team. How can he say that with a straight face? Oh… He doesn’t want us to use wins and losses. Fine.
Of course, wins and losses are derived from the number of runs your team scores measured against the number your team allows. Here’s how the Royals have done scoring and preventing runs over the last four years.
Notice the trend from 2007 (Dayton’s first full year as GM.) The pitchers showed a great deal of improvement that year, but have been giving up ground ever since. The hitters have never been very good, but they are scoring fewer runs this year than any season since 1986. Reread that previous sentence. The Royals in 2009 are scoring less runs than any year since 1986. Wow.
Runs scored is directly related to getting on base and hitting for power. (Yes, Moore likes to talk about speed. Sigh. To paraphrase a former coach, “Willie Wilson isn’t walking through that door.”) Let’s see how the Royals stack up in those departments.
Slugging has gone up, no doubt thanks to Billy Butler crushing doubles. Bam Bam is, of course, the lone offensive bright spot on this team. Miguel Olivo on Tuesday became the first Royal since 2005 to hit 20 home runs and Mike Jacobs could get hot and reach that mark as well. However, both players ultimately do more harm with their inability to get on base than good with their modest power.
And how frightening is it that the best offensive Royals team of the last five years was the 2006 version?
Onto the pitching. A couple of my favorite stats to use to evaluate a pitcher are WHIP and SO/BB ratio. WHIP is a stat that gained traction in fantasy baseball and is a good base value to measure the total number of baserunners a pitcher allows per inning of work. The SO/BB ratio is somewhat related in that both incorporate walks, but I like it because it factors in strikeouts. We all know if your pitchers are striking out hitters, it’s taking pressure off the defense. Crash Davis thinks ground balls are more democratic, but he never saw the 2009 Royals infield defense.
This chart, more than any in this article, illustrates how far the Royals have come since the dark days of 2005 and 2006. Holy crap, the Royals pitching staff actually had a higher WHIP than SO/BB ratio in 2006.
Sure, the turnaround is nice, but we can’t ignore the ground the Royals pitchers gave back in 2009. And that’s with a Cy Young worthy performance from Zack Greinke. Imagine what it would look like if Greinke were mortal.
Finally, I wish the Royals would stop insulting the intelligence of the fan by talking about our “instant gratification culture” and how they have improved the team. Yeah, the team is better than it was four years ago. And that does count for something. However, to claim across the board improvement is simply a falsehood. For the positives (slightly improved slugging) there are negatives (declining OBP.) And because in 2009 the negatives have outweighed the positives, we’re staring squarely at a 97 loss season.
The “fans” (at least those of us who have been around for five years or longer... Although newcomers are certainly welcome to share in this debacle as well) have always been aware of the daunting task it was to turn this franchise around. We get that, Dayton. And we do appreciate the improvement.
The issue now is the stagnant state of the team since Moore's initial overhaul in 2007. After treading water for the last two years at the major league level, the Royals are putting a ton of pressure on their minor league system. Naturally, that's where they point when they blame us for looking for "instant gratification." How are the minors doing? Here's a chart detailing the wins across the minors since 2005.
I don’t know why Moore doesn’t like to use wins and losses. By that measure, he’s improving the minor leagues. Unfortunately, the improvement in the minors mirrors what’s happening in the majors: Yes, there has been improvement, but overall things seem to have slowed or even stalled.
However, the Royals minor league system (from A-ball up) produced more wins this season than any of the previous five. That’s a nifty accomplishment. Unfortunately, the increase in wins was mostly thanks to the Advanced A team in Wilmington which means that we’re still about three years out from seeing anything from “The Process” at the major league level.
What the hell? I’ve waited this long, what’s three more years?
So maybe Dayton should stop patting himself on the back for the job he's done so far. And he should probably drop the condescending attitude that we don’t understand “The Process.” Face it… “The Process” hit a major bump this year and is in danger of completely going off the rails. Probably the best thing for you to do is admit you made a few mistakes. Try that instead of clinging to this “instant gratification” bull and blaming the fans for setting too high of a standard. That’s bush league.
At this point, I think it’s entirely plausible that Moore and Hillman don’t realize they are in a results based business. It’s looking that grim.
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Comments
http://kingsofkauffman.com
wow do they have PR people to reing them in and realize alientating the few people that give them money is not a smart buissness move- what cajones-
Hillman is an embarrassment
But maybe MLB will turn into public education -- we don't like to give letter grades because that would imply that someone fails and that someone is better than the others. What do you say we all just play baseball for fun and give all of the teams a participation trophy instead of having a World Series?