Royals Straight Dope: All National MLB Writers Please Read

Are the KC Royals a good baseball team?

Great question. Don’t assume. Ask. Start from square one.

Yes, they are a good baseball team.

How good?

Pretty darn good. They are the best team in baseball now and have been for almost 3 years. One day someone will come along and take that title from them. But it wasn’t any of the 12 super-hot teams that have come and gone in that time. Nor is it the 13th, the Chicago Cubs who won’t make the World Series in 2016.

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When the time comes the Royals will recognize there is a better team and respectfully hand over that mantle. It won’t be to a team that they are twice as good as, like when they were recently asked to hand it over to the Chicago White Sox.

During their run the KC Royals have set more records that a 1965 Wurlitzer jukebox.

The last time any baseball team was this devastating, was the NY Yankees 1996-2000 team. But that was a different era for baseball. The Yankees actually didn’t earn many wins during that span. They bought and paid for almost every one. Lessor teams like the Royals and many other small market clubs were serving as nothing more than minor league teams to the biggies.

Most of the old-time Royals fans bolted their team not due to losing, as many have incorrectly suggested, but due to the lack of trying to field a serious team.  The Yankees were in the World Series 4 of those 5 seasons because there was no competition allowed at that time in MLB.

So you have to go back a lot further to find a team as totally devastating as the KC Royals.

Why?

It’s a pretty simple formula. They aren’t a minor league team anymore. Every player is available to them now. And they can keep their good players. It’s the “homegrown” process that Moore likes to champion. Players that were drafted into the system early by their extremely talented group of scouts. Giving players away because they are too talented is not an option anymore. They are a “buyer” at the trade deadline now, not a “seller”. And no more giving away the good players that they had worked so hard to procure.

It’s nice to be the best:

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