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Kansas City Royals: Tanking is for losers

By Michael Huckins |
KC Royals (Photo by Brian Davidson/Getty Images)
KC Royals (Photo by Brian Davidson/Getty Images)
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(Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images)
(Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images) /

Major League Baseball fans are becoming accustomed to their teams tanking, or losing on purpose, in order to improve their future. Fans of the Kansas City Royals should not buy into this myth.

Jon Heyman, of the MLB Network, recently informed the world that the Kansas City Royals intend to be operating with a “very limited budget” in 2020. This would mean that, once again, the Royals will not even attempt to compete in 2020. They will accept that they cannot become a playoff team.

And rather than expecting them to work towards becoming a winning team, we should expect another season of tanking. If this is true, this is terrible news for Royals fans.

This will deflate all the hopes that came along with a new owner. Royals fans have spent the last 25 years, since the passing of Ewing Kauffman, dealing with ownership that refuses to put a legitimate major league product on the field with any regularity.

We have watched more seasons dedicated to tanking, or losing on purpose than we have seasons that were dedicated to competing. And all behind the supposed justification that we are incapable of fielding a winning team year in and year out. This would suggest that the new owner will continue this same indefensible behavior.

I would hope that, by now, the consistent claims made by the Royals organization that they are losing money, or that they are lucky to break even, are no longer taken seriously by fans. But, we can at least all agree that a company that is constantly losing money does not grow ten-fold in value (from $100 million to $1 billion) in a span of 20 years. And we know that is what has happened to the Kansas City Royals.

The Royals are not losing money and then deciding to cut payroll to make ends meet. This is not the corporate version of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch every day in order to pay the light bill. They are cutting payroll, rather than investing in a competitive team, to increase profits during what they see as down years not worth salvaging.

(Photo by David Banks/Getty Images)
(Photo by David Banks/Getty Images) /

If the Royals do not expect to invest any more money into their current payroll, when do they expect to be able to compete again?

As we enter 2020, the Kansas City Royals are currently one more 103-loss season away from being as bad as they have ever been. Ever. And do we really think another offseason of discount bin free agents like Chris Owings and Lucas Duda will do anything to keep us from losing another 103 games? I am skeptical.

This would mean that four years into our “rebuild” we will be unable to show any improvement. And, that we will have failed so remarkably to find talent that our team is worse than it has ever been, even after 3 straight years of historical losing. If this happens and we are not calling for Dayton Moore to be replaced, we should all at least write very polite apology letters to Allard Baird.

I am not sure if this new “limited budget”, much like the old limited budget, comes from ownership or the general manager. Ultimately, it should not matter to us as fans. We should demand improvement and there is very little evidence to suggest that tanking has even produced positive results for the Royals this time around.

More teams are tanking now than ever before. Because of this, the plan to lose on purpose by refusing to field a first-class team all summer seems to be bringing back diminishing returns. The Royals lost 103 games in 2019. That is a lot of losing! And the best they could get from that all that losing is the 4th overall pick in the 2020 draft. Do we really want to spend another few years actively trying to suck harder than the Marlins?

(Photo by Eric Espada/Getty Images)
(Photo by Eric Espada/Getty Images) /

If the Royals are willing to keep losing this many games year after year, we should at least expect that the tanking is improving our young talent level.

There is evidence to suggest that a relatively higher pick in the draft does not make all that much difference to the Royals. The Royals draft of 2018, that has us all so rightfully excited, did not come with a high first-round pick. Brady Singer was our first pick in that draft and that was with the 18th spot.

Yes, Hosmer and Moose were both top 5 picks that worked out great for us. But do you know who else were Top 5 picks? Christian Colon, Bubba Starling, and Kyle Zimmer. Is it worth not trying to win games for years at a time all so we can make sure we get first shot at the next Christian Colon?

The Royals, as an organization, writing off multiple seasons is not something we should just accept. Kansas City Royals fans are not second class. And it is well beyond time that the management of the Royals stop treating us as if we are.

If ownership decides it is simply not worth it to them to increase payroll just to avoid fielding a pathetic roster there is, ultimately, nothing fans can do to stop them. But the Royals should not be surprised when fans begin making similar decisions about whether they want to spend their money to come to watch a team play that has clearly made a conscious decision to tank yet another season away. How many years of losing 100 games does the organization believe fans should be expected to endure before changing the channel?

(Photo by Peter Aiken/Getty Images)
(Photo by Peter Aiken/Getty Images) /

If the plan for the Royals moving forward is that the minor league talent will save us, we are going to need better minor league talent.

Perhaps the most distressing aspect, to me, of the Royals’ intention to avoid improving their ballclub for 2020 is that it would mean they believe our minor league system has all the answers moving forward. And it does not. We will not suddenly be competitive in 2021 with our current roster.

We are the only team in the American League Central whose farm system is not ranked in the Top 15 by MLB.com. At best, our current minor league system is mediocre. The 2018 draft picks have played very well. None of the Fab Five have underperformed, to this point. But, do we really expect all of them to become major league starting pitchers? That is just not realistic. So, who else will be pitching for us in 2 years? It is not going to be Ashe Russel. We will have Brad Keller and…. welp.

Our best offensive prospect, and our highest-rated prospect overall, was playing in high school last year. Almost every offensive prospect in our system took a step backward in 2019. The cavalry is clearly not coming in 2020, but is it even realistic to expect it to come in 2021? 2022?

Next. Michael Pineda needs to be a member of the Royals. dark

Do we just keep kicking the can down the road for years to come? Or maybe the Royals should accept that they have failed to gather the talent necessary to turn around their losing ways simply by bringing up the next wave of minor league prospects any time soon. Maybe they should correct those mistakes by going out and spending some money to make the team better. Because, at some point, you either get back to winning or accept that you are not really tanking at all. You are just losing.

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