It’s a weird thing. I don’t know if it’s Moore or Glass or what.

But the money is spent. Might as well try to turn it into some surplus value.

They’re not contending next year unless it’s a miracle/fluke, so they could move him and cycle a few more cheap vets through the closer spot if needed.

I guess maybe their offseason plan is to go spend $40-50 million in free agency to buy two starters and left handed bat, but I have a hard time seeing how that works, too.

I mean, maybe in this market that could buy something like this:
3B Mike Moustakas 3/36
SP Kyle Gibson 3/30
SP Julio Teheran 3/30

But even assuming those guys could be bought for a combined $32 million, would that be enough of a P staff to really go compete?

Merrifield
Mondesi
Dozier
Moustakas
Perez
Soler
Phillips
Starling
Lopez

Looks like a pretty intriguing lineup that could produce.

But does this really inspire a ton of confidence?

Gibson
Duffy
Keller
Teheran
Junis

And then... there the bullpen...

It's hard to decipher any real plan at all from what Moore is doing. We're doing no better than treading water. We had one of the best farm systems in recent memory and the majority of the players in that system still never developed. With a bottom half farm system we're going to see the majority never develop and those that do won't be nearly enough. Moore is being lapped by the competition.

I think between Teheran and Gibson you can probably add at least $5 million in AAV there. I think Teheran's gonna get a nice deal; maybe in the $15-16 million per over 4+ years.

Besides, the Braves will almost certainly pick up his option, if for no other reason than to trade him.

Gibson, if he can continue to K guys and take the ball every 5th day, is probably sitting near $12 million on a possible offer.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but this is pretty typical of even the best farm systems.

This doesn’t excuse Moore from his plan 2018-onwards though. I have no idea what his aim was with Kennedy at the deadline (unless that was a mandate from above).

Sad, now I hope the Astros lose in the first series. I want to see greinke retire without a ring.

I don't think he phrased it right, None of the Royals elite prospects became true stars, the Astros for example have a much better return in all their guys.

Alex Gordon at his peak was pretty close to a star. He just didn't have the name recognition. There was a like a 5 year period where he legit was one of the top WAR players in baseball leading up to the World Series win. That's not a small sample size.

Salvador Perez is one of the best catchers in baseball too.

Honestly Whit Merrifield is an elite player and Mondesi looks like he will be too.

I won't bargue they developed some high level guys but Hosmer and Moustakas didn't bring the value of Correia or Springer or Bregman, I just think they got a higher return on their guys.

No clue what the market will bring for those guys - market has been so unpredictable the past few years.

Whoever pays Teheran that will regret it, hard. But even still... let’s say your estimates are what it takes. That gets you right around $40 million a year in additional commitments (probably back-loaded a bit into a mutual option, but still).

That would the Royals 2020 payroll in the 105-115 zone.

Maybe that’s what Moore is thinking in holding Kennedy. That they can compete next year.

I don’t see it... would still be a TON of question marks and too many to really think they had a chance at much more than lucking into a wildcard.

What are you guys putting the chances of Whit being dealt in December?

25-30.

I could see the Padres or Dodgers matching up really well. The Twins, too, as well as the Giants or Phillies.

Royals have to be one of the worst ran organizations in the league. DM is completely clueless, someone had to have called about Kennedy and nothing gets done. Not even a lottery ticket player. You're telling me teams called about Diekman and his 4.75 ERA, but no one called about Kennedy? You literally take any deal you can. Dayton is clueless.

I like this post on the 24/7 Royals board:

The 5 worst teams in baseball are pretty clearly Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City, Toronto and Miami.

Baltimore has very little of value. Detroit, Toronto and Miami flipped everything not nailed down getting some interesting parts.

KC kept everyone but spare parts, presumably to wave a magic wand and improve by 25 games next year.

I think they should have just moved Kennedy because his stock probably isn't going to be higher.

That said, the idea that we're going to trade Kennedy for anyone who is going to help us improve by 25 games next year is crazy. Zach Greinke got one surefire prospect. You trade Kennedy just to maximize the value of his terrible contract and pick up whatever lottery ticket you get out of it.

If this team succeeds it's because we get a couple legit starters out of this group of elite prospects in AA/A ball and we can turn guys like Zimmer and Lovelady into good relievers, along with Dayton actually making some good FA moves with the bullpen.

On another note, why the **** is Hamilton still here? Give Phillips a chance.

Phillips will be up in a month. :shrug:
Kennedy and Hamilton will also likely clear waivers and be available for trade later.

Maybe you missed the memo.

I don't know what memo you are referring to, so probably LMAO

The August waiver trades dont exist any more.

Worst run organizations don't have a World Series championship and two pennants in the last 5 years. And were a Lorenzo Cain injury and Ventura death from having a 4 year run.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">�� FIVE-STRIKEOUT INNING ��<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Royals?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Royals</a> prospect Malcolm Van Buren notches 5⃣ K&#39;s in one frame for <a href="https://twitter.com/BRoyalsKC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BRoyalsKC</a>.<br><br>��: <a href="https://t.co/HTuGmnAWbD">https://t.co/HTuGmnAWbD</a> <a href="https://t.co/fyqER1H6YN">pic.twitter.com/fyqER1H6YN</a></p>&mdash; Minor League Baseball (@MiLB) <a href="https://twitter.com/MiLB/status/1156766724403990529?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 1, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The **** happened there? World's shittiest catcher kept dropping swung on third strikes? Farm team came up against a lineup of Tyreek Hill / Terence Gore clones?

The ball is totally not juiced. The Twins, who the Royals play next, are on pace to obliterate the all-time team HR record by about 50 homers. Nothing to see here.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Twins just hit 50+ HR for the 3rd straight calendar month. <br><br>That&#39;s three 50-HR calendar months for them already in 2019.<br><br>They had three 50-HR calendar months in *franchise history* entering this year. <a href="https://t.co/9BmqZcmm0V">pic.twitter.com/9BmqZcmm0V</a></p>&mdash; Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) <a href="https://twitter.com/SlangsOnSports/status/1156771365053243392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 1, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I hate that franchise, don't know why. I love knowing that as good as they have been this year they still can't compete with Houston/New York/Boston in the postseason.

In the words of Verlander..."it's a joke".

It's basically the Yankees. They somehow get the Yankees every time they make the playoffs and get slaughtered. It's something like 5 of their last 6 playoff series have been against the Yankees.

If the playoffs started today... they'd get the Yankees again.

So the late 70’s Royals...George Brett is not walking through that door.
#upperdeckvsgoose

To me that was always just as impressive. In spite of the fact that none of our "homegrown" guys became true stars (even though Gordo, through defense, was likely one as tk points out), our system was so deep anyways that we made it to deep October twice in a row.

Our homegrown talent in 2014-2015 was as follows, right?

Offensive:

Hos
Moose
Gordo
Salvy
Billay

Bench:
Dyson
Colon
Mondesi
Paulo
Gore

Pitchers:
Yordano
Duffy
Kelvin
Holland
Hoch
Collins
Finnegan

That doesn't include Cain and Esky, though large parts of their development came in KC. This list, especially if you give credit to the Royals for some of Cain's development, is really a testament to how well the organization did at developing if not stars, solid major league players.

I think Eric Hosmer was the only prospect of the bunch who was hyped to be a "superstar" (if I remember right A-Rod was the one who made that prediction). Montgomery was up there as well and his failure to launch hit hard, but Hos was the only one who made it to the majors who never quite hit his hype, I'd argue. We were always waiting for his hot streaks to become his new normal, for when his hard-hit baseballs would start falling over the fence more, but it never quite hit that 30-40 HR potential we hoped he'd have. As tight as money is now, imagine if we landed him for 130m? There's a sizeable chunk of Padres fans who are angry they gave up a player with more power and who was far cheaper (Franmil) since they're locked up with Hosmer for the immediate future.

The Twins and Indians are just mediocre enough to win a garbage division. They are in no shape or form legit contenders.

Since the 2015 WS they aren't exactly a glowing example of how to do a good job....and their minor league failures started long before that. I read some shit on the Royals Review board that the Royals front office is full of cronies from George Mason that are dipshits, I don't know much about that so I won't make any more comments on it.

However I will say this, the Royals took what should have been a long run and turned it into about a 3 year run.

Swept �� at home by a f**** garbage team.

Dayton was aided by having an extremely lucky couple
year run and being so ****ing terrible for so long that he was able to draft decent talent. That all culminated into the 2 AL Championships and 1 WS Championship. Also add in having a Ned proof bullpen, maybe the best one ever.

Houston did the same thing though, they tanked hard for high picks and hit on those picks but they continue to add talent to their system while winning, Royals didn't do that.

And as always, look st the “talent” we traded away. A ton of shit. We didn’t give up anything. One could say, well: we HAD to trade away all that talent to win. We squeezed every drop we had in that system.

You wanna know the difference? Houston knows how to develop those high picks. KC can't develop shit.

And almost none of that talent developed anyways, so it's not like we'd be any better off if they had stayed. Montgomery, Reed, Finnegan, Lamb, etc. all hardly amounted to crap. How is it we were so awful through the late 90s and early 2000s but we were still able to find bonafide stars like Damon, Beltran, Dye, Sweeney, and later on Greinke? Despite the World Series win we've struggled miserably finding elite talent.

It's kind of obvious our minor league developmental staff is not very good.

It's not easy to go to two straight World Series. The Indians didn't do it. The Cubs didn't do it. Even the Astros didn't do it.

Acting like it was just pure luck and they didn't develop any talent is absurd. They won 86 games the year before the two pennants. That was a good baseball team, even though everyone wants to act like it was some giant fluke.

I won't say it was a fluke, but I will argue we were extremely fortunate that the Red Sox and Yankees were both down during our run and Houston wasn't quite at their pinnacle yet. I'm not so sure the 2015 Royals would have competed for a World Series in the 2019 AL.

Yeah, and it's a bit disingenuous to say there was something wrong with the Royals approach by comparing them to the team who has literally set the gold standard for tanking and player development.

The Royals biggest problem during their run was their struggle to develop pitching, and this was no secret to us at that time. But even still, Yordano, Duffy, Kelvin, Holland and Hoch all had critical performances in our 2014-2015 run. This should speak to just how deep our system was if we were still able to have players perform at this level from the biggest weakness in the organization.

The Royals were also able to help Moose, Cain and Gordo to radically re-design their plate approaches and even paired Cain with a track coach to address his chronic injury problems. With Gordo, not only did they give him the tools to "dominate", but also put him and Cain with fantastic outfield coaching that allowed them to become elite defensive players at their positions.

The Royals also wanted to fundamentally re-design Hos and Esky's swings and approaches (to make both swings shorter). They recognized the issues both players had at the plate, but if your future star prefers to take batting practice with his firefighter brother than MLB coaching, there's only so much you can do.

All of this shouldn't excuse GMDM for his moves 2018 onwards, but the Royals development should absolutely be lauded for 2014-2015, especially for the impact they made at the plate and on the defensive side of the diamond, the revisionism many Royals fans have now is very surprising.

Are we using a 2014-2015 baseball or a 2019 one?

Even Wil Myers sucks. 9 career war in almost 7 seasons. That’s gotta he one of the worst performances by a top-5 prospect in the last 25 years

The Royals internal scouting on him looks dead-on in retrospect.

K’s too much, defensive liability, and gets “bored” on the field.

The fact that Franmil got blocked by a combination of Hos and Myers on the Padres isn’t sitting well with a lot of Pads fans.

They were the best team in baseball for the last couple months of that 86 win season.

So well that they traded him because they thought he was terrible in the field.

There were a few notable innovations or practices that led to the Royals’ resurgence under Moore and culminated in the pennants and title.

1) Commitment to draft, scouting, and paying large bonuses to guys outside the top round.

This was taken away by the hard slot. Moore’s staff did a bad job adjusting to the new normal, though it should be lauded for handling the 2013 draft in the way it did, which landed a current very productive player and the piece that enabled them to acquire Zobrist.

It took them a while, but it seems they finally adjusted, if the post-2016 drafts continue to trend the way they are. They have made a major shift in approach to high picks.

2) Emphasis on athleticism and speed on defense.

The Royals defense during that run was tremendously rangy and sure-handed and played really well to the ballpark dimensions.

In the past few years, teams started shifting at rates not seen before, which takes away a lot of the edge having plus natural defenders provides.

3) Bullpen depth and dominance. The Royals ability to shorten games WAS somewhat of a fortunate find... but once the effect was realized the team bought in hard. This has led to a bunch of teams copy-catting the approach and stockpiling multiple high octane bullpen arms.

4) Contact ability. Not every team has adopted this, but look at what the Astros did after 2015. They re-tooled their lineup to focus more on making contact and now have the hardest team to strike out in baseball. That approach gives an advantage in October (to be fair, the Giants were doing this first)

Those advantages have been caught up. That’s what markets do. The trick is finding the next market imbalance and exploiting that (or, Moneyball, in its purest form).

Are they doing that with all these college arms they drafted in 17 and 18? Perhaps.

Is Moore as good at his job as Jeff Luhnow? No, I wouldn’t argue he is. But the task Moore and his front office pulled off - considering the state of things when he took over and the financial constraints of the owner/market - deserves better than being relegated to pure luck.

I think Moore’s developmental system has at times been way too rigid. Fighting long toss and restricting guys from throwing sliders, or trying to square peg specific pitch types, for example. Bill Fischer is - thankfully - gone, and there has been a shift in those areas.

But even with that, i do think they’re still too old school. I’m not 100 percent bought into the idea of this front office getting them back to the WS. If they don’t become a contender again in 2021/22, I think we’ll see fresh blood (and be in much better shape to hire quality than before).

Luhnow is incredible. There’s not a GM in baseball that stacks up when compared to him. And hey, it’s not like he was part of the Royals staff, forced out acrimoniously, and then we realized he was the brain behind the throne the whole time (sorry, Cards fans).

If you compare Moore to GMs in similar situations, he stacks up fine. He isn’t the best, but he’s competent.

Tampa - Silverman isn’t quite as good as Friedman, but also didn’t have the benefit of years of top 5 picks. He’s better than Moore, though.

Pittsburgh - Huntington is a poor man’s Moore, and if you want to talk about a real trade fleecing, look at his Chris Archer deal.

Cincinnati - moore stacks up favorably here, too.

Seattle - Remember when Royals fans though Jack Z was so much better than Moore? Yeah, neither does Jerry diPoto

Cleveland - here’s another one where the front office has outperformed Moore and co.

Miami - it’s unfair, but Moore crushes their performance, just like about anyone would.

Milwaukee - most similar to KC, they’ve built winning teams the past few years and are contenders this year, but the pitching collapse threatens to shut the window without much to show for it.

Arizona - Dave Stewart was a disaster. They had a nice trade deadline yesterday, but it’s the first time I can think of anything really nice to say about the current regime.

And then there’s a long list of bigger market teams who haven’t been able to get over the same humps :

Angels
Orioles
Blue Jays
Nationals
Mets
Rangers

Other Royals draft picks say, hold my beer.
Kyle Zimmer #5
Bubba Starling #5
Christian Colon #4
Luke Hochevar #1
Chris Lubanski #5
Mike Stodolka #4
Jeff Austin #4

Oh, you said Top-5 prospect. Well nonetheless.

It was the K rate, from what I recall.


Prospectus ran an analysis on the 114 top 10 prospects from the prior 15 years....some made the list multiple times btw......when Myers (4) and Long-toss Bauer (10) were traded winter 2012. Its a rarity when they area. Those traded end up accumulating HALF the war as those kept.


https://www.baseballprospectus.com/n...ho-get-traded/



Teams tend to know when to dump.

Bauer is sure coming into his own though. He's had a real nice last couple of years. Who knows how good he could have been if he wasn't a massive douchebag though.

Yep. He’s a damn good player.

I was referencing Franmil Reyes with that comment.

The argument I’ve seen is that the org would have been much better off if Franmil was put at first (especially since they would have had him at a cost-controlled contract for five more years) compared to Hos @ 144m. Especially since Franmil is already on pace for a 40 HR year.

In regards to Myers, Wil has the same exact problem as Franmil on defense (and has been offensively lost this season to boot) but was inked to a 5 year/83 million dollar deal.

I think the complaint is more that there have been some questionable personnel and contract decisions in spite of the Padres being in the midst of a super exciting rebuild.

So many problems in the NL could be solved by having the DH.

Really? You don't think Toronto was any good? That was one of the best offensive teams of this decade. I believe they posted the highest team OPS any team had posted in like 4-5 years. They had the league MVP, three 40 HR guys and an ace who finished 2nd in the Cy Young voting and led the league in ERA.

That Royals team could hurt you 1-9, was effectively the greatest contact hitting team in history. They had over 100 less strikeouts than any other team, and they did it two years in a row. They were the best defensive team in baseball over a 3 year period, and they had one of the greatest bullpens of all time.

There was nothing fluke about that. Now you can argue that's not the team you should build, but they built a team around contact, speed and defense and they were truly great in all of those areas. In terms of contact, defense and bullpen pitching they were probably one of the greatest teams in recent history, if not ever.

They were awesome.

So fun to watch.

kcchiefsus was bitching all through 2015.

The thrashing of the BlueGays was one of the greatest joys of my entire sports life. Just amazing.

Hell yeah.

The mocking of Donaldson will never be forgotten.

They still blame the amish kid as the reason they lost the series.

Was Houston not at their pinnacle? Or could they only win after the KC dynasty was gone?

They were actually a year early that year, they gave the Royals a huge test and honestly without the bad hope that went over Correira's glove the Royals were not in a good spot.

Glad it worked out the way it did but that was a tense series.

Less to do with KC, and more to due with Verlander and Bregman.

Those two have taken them to the next level.

It’s why I respect the hell out of Jeff Luhnow. Many GMs in his situation would have sat tight instead of paying the prospect price for Verlander, and many would have caved to Allard (which would have prevented them from getting Bergman).

He’s the best GM in baseball. People can talk about Friedman all they want, but he hasn’t adjusted to working in a big market. He’s still acting like a small market GM who can’t afford to move prospects.

Houston is not married to any player/prospect either, the Royals have some of that issue, Houston will move anyone if the deal is right.

Here's an extremely long but very interesting read on the Astros model:

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2019/6...great-scouting

effectively taking Moneyball to the next level...

I do wonder how much of that Grienke deal was done because they think Cole is gone after this year.

The latest KC Star article is full of interesting tidbits on the trade deadline:

- Royals wanted major league ready talent on any pieces with multiple years of control (despite not being close to contending)
- The Royals were reluctant to throw in money to facilitate trades
-The Royals want to build depth in the minors

All of those are obvious and are already well known, but there's a lot of contradiction in there. How do you build depth in the minors without being willing to trade anyone of value and without being willing to throw in some money here or there?

They wanted Brett Phillips types that they could hold in AAA to delay their service time.

Today’s DJs Nutz update on Bruce Harper:



Bruce Harper: 472pa 62r 18hr 72rbi 5sb .252/373/466 118wRC+ 2.3war
Scott Kingery: 304pa 41r 13hr 32rbi 8sb .276/336/502 117wRC+ 1.7war

The contradiction is because he’s in general GM speak, which needs to be taken with a grain of salt rather than at face value.

Like “MLB ready talent.” People assume that means guys who have debuted. It doesn’t mean that, necessarily. It just means players who are close (AA and AAA would count).

The Royals seem to always overvalue their own players, they had this issue even in the good years.

191 qualified hitters. Slugging percentage:

81. Whit Merrifield .480
97. Dansby Swanson .468
98. Bruce Harper .466



“Generational talent”

Get it together Bruce.

Adam and Bruce

His peers know he’s total garbage too:


According to the poll of MLB players, 62-percent answered Harper as the most-overrated player in the league. The next closest player came in with just 4.1-percent of the vote – Toronto Blue jays pitcher Marcus Stroman took home the honor of the second most-overrated player. Mar 27, 2019

Good read & quite an indictment of Moore.

I think the real accurate part of that is the bullpen stuff. Dayton has done a horrendous job of signing bullpen pieces the last couple years and that's the biggest reason this team has struggled. Honestly since the World Series he hasn't had the luck with relievers he had before.

The stuff with Phillips and Starling doesn't bother me as much. But I concede that my opinion is way different than most people. Sometimes it's a good thing to let a guy have some sustained success, especially when it's someone like Starling who never has before. It has not hurt the process at all because Starling spent an extra month at AAA. It's honestly just whining because people were sick of watching Hamilton. So now we're seeing it with Phillips even though he's going to have to fight for playing time, especially when Mondesi comes back. If we wait to bring him in September it's not going hurt anything. I'd rather he be getting every day ABs than sharing a platoon with Dozier, Cuthbert, O'Hearn and Whit.

But that doesn't excuse that they're giving every day time to Gordon when they need to be evaluating young players.