Dayton’s Delusion and Historic Ineptitude

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that our front office is apparently subject to massive delusions.  Many of you who read other Royals blogs are already aware of our GM’s quotes so I apologize for the redundancy contained herein.  To minimize said redundancy, I thought it would be best to provide links that address this issue.  The article, and more accurately the quotes, that started it all was a piece written by Bob Dutton on Wednesday morning titled Moore has no doubt that Royals are on the right track for long-term success.  Reactions have come quickly from many sources.

• Number 4 – The Smirk reacted with Taking Responsibility
• Is Dayton Moore Headed Down the Right Path?  was posted by Clark Fosler over at Royals Authority
• Royals Review featured Dayton Moore Tells Fans to Trust the Process, Ignore Reality
• Sam Mellinger addresses the delusion over on his Ball Star blog, in a piece titled Perceived delusion, real frustration, and what the Royals can do about it

Those four do a pretty good job of covering the nuts and bolts of the issue.  As for me, I have been willing to give Dayton Moore a significant amount of latitude up till now, but when he makes comments like, “If our processes were so poor, how were we able to put together a pretty good team in the off-season?” he loses a lot of stock in my book.  First of all, if our GM’s goal is to put together a “pretty good team” then he needs to resign.  Pretty good simply isn’t good enough in the landscape of professional sports.  Second, what team was he looking at this off-season?  How in the world did he miss the lack of defense on the roster?  How in the world did he think the Royals were going to score enough runs to win with the collection of OBP handicapped players he had assembled?  Healthy or not, this team wasn’t good enough.  I was drinking the kool-aid of Kevin Seitzer and the spring training numbers and I still picked them to finished 3rd with a 77-85 record.  Admittedly, I was overly optimistic, but anyone who seriously thought this team could contend, even in the AL Central, was blinded by the light of optimism to the Nth degree.  People were quick to point out that each of the divisional foes had a flaw, but never seemed to acknowledge that the Royals were constructed with multiple flaws.  Tony Pena Jr on the roster was a flaw unto itself that it took over a half of the season to correct.

Moore went on to say, “most people around baseball felt we were vastly improved.”  Like his previous quote this takes me in two directions.  First, when you are as far down as the Royals have been, vastly improved doesn’t get you very far.  You can polish a poo all you want, but in the end you still have poo on your hands.  Second, those same people around baseball were also collectively predicting that the Cleveland Indians would win the division so I’m sorry if I’m not giddy that the “experts” thought the Royals would be improved.  Not only did I not buy the Indians as a first place team, I was selling them as the 2009 AL Central cellar dwellers as you can read about here.  Ironically the Royals are standing in the way of that prediction being correct since our KC team now reside in last place after tonight.

I understand that Moore is in damage control mode and is trying to spin things the best he can, but I am also fairly certain he actually believes some of the stuff he is saying.  This kind of snow-job may work on fans of a different team, like the Atlanta Braves, but this doesn’t fly with Royals fans, especially when the losing has set in for the season.  Kansas City Royals fans are desperate for a winner and even the brightest and best of us can be snowed by a modest winning streak or an 18-11 start.  That said, we are well versed in the economics of small-market baseball and we’ve been in that classroom for far longer than Dayton Moore.  Even a casual fan of the Kansas City Royals is well versed in this issue.  Even the casual Royals fan is able to pick out a truly crappy player before the ink has dried on their contract or the press release of their acquisition has been typed up.  Anyone who is still invested in this team, after the last 15 seasons, is also able to take the truth.  As such, it would be nice to get an honest assessment about something from the front office or the manager of this team.  The more he talks the more the fan base doubts his ability and doubt is rarely a good thing, especially in baseball.  I still believe Dayton can turn things around, but I am also fairly certain that he is borderline insane.  Being insane does not prevent a person from having a positive impact on the world and it doesn’t necessarily prevent someone from being good at their job.  Unfortunately being insane can have annoying side effects like keeping  TPJ around for half of a season (sorry I just can’t let it go).

Changing gears a little bit, but still on the heels of Dayton’s delusions, there have been a number of well timed posts covering the borderline historic ineptitude of the Kansas City Royals.

• Wednesday Royals have the wrong kind of history in their sights was posted over on Big League Stew
• Earlier that same day, Bradford Doolittle posted Things for the Royals to shoot for over on Upon Further Review

I think it is important to state the obvious; the numbers in past years don’t predetermine the future of the Royals or any other organization.  Help is on they way, but who is running things when the help finally arrives remains to be seen.  Despite the vote of confidence, I don’t believe that Trey Hillman will be the manager of this team when opening day of the 2010 season rolls around.  As for Dayton, he should have at least 2 more years of job security.  The ML team is a mess, and the Omaha Royals aren’t much better off, but from Double-A down some really good things are happening in this organization.

To understand where we are going, we have to understand where we have been, but where we have been does not have to determine where we are going.