Dayton Moore, David Glass, & Ending False Narratives

Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

There have been some interesting narratives surrounding the Royals’ offseason. One is the narrative that just won’t seem to die, that David Glass isn’t willing to invest enough money into the team’s payroll. I wrote about this earlier, and yet, still pundits complain. Another thing I’ve seen quite often is that Dayton Moore went into the winter wanting to focus on short-term deals to maintain some financial flexibility in the future.

Both of those narratives are incorrect, and we can easily see that by looking at some of the Royals’ offseason targets.

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Last Friday, in Andy McCullough’s online chat, he revealed that the Royals tried to sign Melky Cabrera to a four-year contract, but that the average annual value fell short of what he received from the White Sox.

We also learned that Francisco Liriano turned down a three-year, $36 million offer from the Royals to accept $3 million more from the Pirates.

The Royals reportedly had a three-year offer to Ervin Santana, and there were whispers of a four-year offer to James Shields.

Does that look like a team not willing to spend money? Does that look like a team that’s only wanting short-term deals?

Cabrera, Liriano, and Santana all rejected a qualifying offer, which means the Royals would have lost their first round draft pick – and that draft pool money – if they had signed one of them. The Royals unquestionably were aiming high this offseason. They wanted to sign the better players, and they were willing to pay a lot of money to do so. They were simply spurned for even bigger paychecks. Such is life in baseball.

You can even throw the Billy Butler ordeal into that group, since the Royals did want him back, just not for $30 million over three years.

We don’t know when all of these offers were made, so we don’t really know if the Royals preferred Liriano to Santana or vice versa, but we can say definitively that the group of players they eventually signed were not Plan A.

The team didn’t enter the winter focusing on one- and two-year deals. They had to settle for them. That’s not to say the Royals had a bad offseason, as some analysts have insisted, but it wasn’t the offseason they initially wanted.

The funny thing is that had the Royals gotten those primary targets, they would end up facing criticism for overpaying and surrendering a valuable draft pick. Cabrera isn’t a great fit in right field, Liriano’s elbow could explode at any second, and Santana would have been crazy expensive. In the eyes of some, the Royals couldn’t win.

Of course, there are two sides to that coin. Some fans who have loved the short-term deals and talked about how brilliant they are would have loved the longer contracts too. In their eyes, the Royals couldn’t lose. That’s just the way fandom works sometimes.

If contracts aren’t taken into consideration, almost everyone would prefer Cabrera, Liriano, and Butler over Alex Rios, Edinson Volquez, and Kendrys Morales. But baseball isn’t played in a vacuum. The financial commitment must be considered, so the Royals’ actual moves are understandable, even if they are a bit underwhelming.

The Royals have signed a handful of players this winter, and those players probably weren’t at the top of the team’s wish list. The nice thing about baseball, though, is that there are plenty of adequate options available, and their secondary or tertiary plans could still work out. There are several ways to succeed in this league, as the Royals have already proven.

So the next time someone says David Glass isn’t willing to open the checkbook, bop that person on the nose and tell them “no.” If someone says the plan all along was to only sign players for one or two years, spray that person with water. Or you could simply send them a link to this article, which may be a safer plan. Either way, it’s your call. Just make sure that these narratives are put to rest.

Next: Hosmer Signs Two-Year Deal

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