By CHRIS RASMUSSEN
For more than a decade, watching the most generic of losing teams, Royals fans have been hopeless.
We're so used to losing that we can't even imagine winning. It's not that fans hate the current product. Some are just apathetic; others accept it, believing it's not possible to field a winning baseball team in this town because we're too small a market. They accept and therefore enable the flinty indifference of David Glass, discounting the recent success of the A’s, the Rays and the Twins, who aren't exactly baseball’s financial behemoths.
Thankfully -- and not too late for Kansas City baseball’s future -- David Glass is doing what he should have done a decade ago.
He's finally hiring smart personnel, opening up the checkbook and staying the hell out of the way.
Since Glass hired Dayton Moore, the Royals at least try to spend money, even a little extra to lure Jose Guillen and Gil Meche to play in KC and suffer through 90-loss seasons. Moore skillfully navigates baseball’s scrap heap, acquiring both Brian Bannister and Joakim Soria for virtually nothing. Another Moore acquisition, tonight’s starter Kyle Davies, broke the Royals 12-game losing streak in his first start and an 11-game road losing streak in his second.
Most promising, Glass is letting Moore spend money on player development, as witnessed by last week’s amateur baseball draft. The team almost exclusively selected high school players in the draft's opening rounds -- even some who had hired the feared agent Scott Boras -- a risky and expensive proposition as the draftees may opt for college if they find the Royals’ offer too low. Glass, however, provided Moore the financial resources to sign them. 810AM’s Soren Petro alertly points to a development that bears repeating -- hell, shouting from rooftops: KC made good offers to several of these players, even offering “life changing money” to their seventh-round pick, Jason Esposito. Tim Melville, who has first-round talent but dropped to the fourth round due to his financial demands, actually wants to sign with the Royals.
This is ultimately the only way the Royals can field a competitive team.
At last. Hope.
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My best team of MLB is The Kansas City Royals . This why I always fallow their games especially whenever I have some time. I�m always trying not o miss any of their game and hear about the team�s news. But The Kansas City Royals tickets get more pricy especially when there are some hot games. But, if we�re really good fans we should try not to be mean when we�re talking about a favourite teams. It�s not only the Royals tickets that got pricy, but there are other major teams too, so the team needs our support and we should provide as much as we can.
It's hard not to be encouraged by the drafting, international scouting, and player development departments that Moore assembled virtually from scratch. That is a major accomplishment. They have been hyper-aggressive this season with the draft, already signing 3rd rounder Tyler Sample, and it looks like they were not just taking on flier on bonus demand guys who slid. Real encouraging.
But on the major league acquisitions and roster management side, I have some serious issues. I think we'd all take J.P. Howell right now over the mis-used and ineffective Joey Gathright. Then there is Tony Pena Jr. Um, we already had one of those. His name was Andres Blanco. Keeping Buddy Bell for last season, then keeping him through the end of the season after he quit was a horrible blunder. Take a look at what Todd Wellemeyer is doing in St. Louis. Or how about Jeff Keppinger in Cincinnati. Apparently neither fit his profile, so he let them go for nothing. His player profile is a NL one, and that will need to change in a hurry. You can't have four holes in your lineup in the AL and even be .500. I don't care how good your pitching and defense are. At least he and Trey Hillman seem to be finally figuring this out by playing Aviles.
Work in progress, but agreed that there is hope.
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