{"id":30948,"date":"2022-05-31T19:41:54","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T19:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/five-years-no-progress-its-time-to-clean-house\/"},"modified":"2022-05-31T19:41:54","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T19:41:54","slug":"five-years-no-progress-its-time-to-clean-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/five-years-no-progress-its-time-to-clean-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Five years, no progress: it’s time to clean house"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The 2022 Kansas City Royals are an astoundingly terrible baseball team. This is inarguable. They struggle to score runs and rank towards the bottom of the league in nearly every important offensive category. Their starting pitchers have pitched some of the fewest innings in the league but have also managed to give up a whole bunch of runs. Their reliever squad is one of the worst in baseball, too. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the Royals aren’t just bad \u2014 they’re pathetic. They are a team bereft of an identity, saddled with a mismatched roster that somehow manages to block the Royals’ intriguing young talent while simultaneously failing to be good enough to win more than a third of their games. <\/p>\n

Worst of all, the Royals have made no progress in the winning column in half a decade. Five years ago, the Royals were the second-worst team in baseball. And yet after 45 games, this year’s squad has somehow managed to be even worse: at this article’s publish time, the Royals are tied for the worst record in baseball with a team that started the season 3-22.<\/p>\n

The key question behind all this: why? Why are the Royals awful, again? The simple answer is that they are so because their front office, led by Dayton Moore, has made and continues to make the decisions to put them there. <\/p>\n

It is time to clean house. Dayton Moore, JJ Picollo, and Mike Matheny need to go.<\/p>\n

\n

The Royals front office does share some <\/em>blame for the predicament we’re in right now. New owner John Sherman did not properly evaluate the state of his billion-dollar purchase di lui and has doubled down on the cracked foundation. Some media outlets have given the front office a little too much benefit of the doubt for a little too long. And after experiencing decades of losing and embarrassing baseball, beaten down fans aren’t accustomed to demanding better from a franchise that has all of four winning seasons since 1994.<\/p>\n

But none of them are in charge of putting together a baseball team. That is on Moore.<\/p>\n

Moore initially published the book \u201cMore Than a Season: Building a Championship Culture\u201d in the beginning of 2015 after the Royals made the 2014 World Series following eight painful and clumsy rebuilding years. In hindsight, that Moore was so quick to pat himself and his team on the back even as their farm system had ceased to produce talent despite a flurry of top-ten picks should have been a bigger red flag. Near the beginning of the book, Moore had this to say:<\/p>\n

\n

Everyone manages failure differently … the key to baseball is who manages failure the best. You will fail in baseball. Period. But the people and teams that manage it the best are able to reach their ceilings.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Certainly, the Royals have had more than their fair share of failure. During Moore’s 16-season tenure as head of the baseball operations department, he has guided the team to three winning seasons \u2014 the fewest among all teams in Major League Baseball. During Moore’s tenure, every other team in the American League Central has won the division at least twice except for, of course, the Royals. Furthermore, the 2015 Royals own the unpleasant distinction as the only World Series winner since 2000 to go over four years until they next had a winning record.<\/p>\n

Much can be said about the Royals’ World Series runs, but Moore and the front office cannot control what happens on the field, and it is not their job to play baseball. Weird things happen in short playoff series. It is the front office’s job, however, to regularly assemble competitive Royals squads. Unfortunately, we have a lot of data points that suggest they are exceedingly bad at that crucial part of baseball operations.<\/p>\n

To use Moore’s own words, it has become obvious that the Royals have ceased to manage failure. <\/p>\n

There is no shortage of small-market teams that have been able to stay competitive with similar resources to the Royals. The St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, Cleveland Guardians, Oakland Athletics, and Tampa Bay Rays have been consistently competitive ever since Moore and his front office of him took over. Those are what well-run franchises look like. That the Royals are the ones with the World Series victory is a cruel twist of fate for the likes of Cleveland and Oakland \u2014 not the other way around.<\/p>\n

Well-run franchises don’t struggle to simply win more games than they lose for a decade and a half. Well-run franchises don’t immediately crumble after assembling the significant talent required to win a World Series. Well-run franchises don’t regularly go through eight-year rebuilds. Well-run franchises don’t make excuses for why they find themselves barreling towards losing 100 games for the third time in fifth years while actively trying not to tank.<\/p>\n

\n

We would be remiss in discussing this season, which has been such a train wreck that it would be unfair to train wrecks for calling it as such. A core component of such a train wreck is that they insist that they’re trying to win games, finally. The Royals thought that they could compete last year \u2014 or at least, that’s what they told reporters in November of 2020. <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe expect to win next year,\u201d Moore said during a video conference call with reporters. “What does that look like? Is it going to be enough wins to make the playoffs? We’ll find out. Our mindset is going to be to win every single pitch, every inning, win every game. That’s the only way that we’re ever going to win another championship, you’ve got to expect to win at all aspects. “<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, they found out. They lost 88 games and ended up 17 games behind in the Wild Card chase. Anyway, even after jettisoning their hitting coach because the Royals’ offense this year was an embarrassment and their record standing at 12-20, general manager JJ Picollo had the gall to say that they still thought a competitive season was still in the cards.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u201cWe’re still in this race,\u201d Royals GM JJ Picollo said today.<\/p>\n

“You look at where the division is, we’re in a spot where we can make a run and be competitive.” #Royals<\/a><\/p>\n

– Josh Vernier (@ JoshVernier610) May 16, 2022<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

The Royals promptly lost eight out of their next 10 games to become the worst team in the American League.<\/p>\n

There are two emblematic problems at the heart of this failure of a season: they need to move on much more quickly from underperforming veterans and overhaul \u2014 or at least make serious changes to \u2014 how they coach pitching at the big league level. Fortunately, this is obvious. Unfortunately, this is obvious to everybody but the Kansas City Royals. <\/p>\n

In a recent mailbag, Alec Lewis relayed that opposing scouts don’t think Santana is a big league player anymore. <\/p>\n

\n

Multiple opposing scouts have asked this same question: Why? Why is manager Mike Matheny continuing to pencil Santana into the lineup nightly? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And if that isn’t damning enough, opposing teams also think the Royals are doing a poor job with pitching development and, importantly, that there are fixes out there the Royals aren’t good enough to implement.<\/p>\n

\n

What’s notable are comments that scouts and analysts who work for opposing teams have made in regards to the Royals’ pitching. Some are convinced that their staffs could transform some of the Royals ‘prospects’ deliveries and arsenals because their organizations are better equipped to deliver a unified message directly to the player.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In a piece from a few weeks ago, Lewis also highlighted sharp improvements by former Royals after they were able to receive pitching coaching elsewhere: Brad Boxberger, Wily Peralta, Jorge Lopez, Jason Adam, and Jake Junis, to name a few. He included one sentence that speaks to far greater issues:<\/p>\n

\n

Notably, current Royals big leaguers are not ignorant of the strides others have made elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is one thing for fans to be critical of the Royals. It is more dire for journalists \u2014 whose jobs need cautious objectivity \u2014 to be critical of the Royals. It is even more dire for opposing scouts \u2014 who have insider knowledge \u2014 to be critical of the Royals. But for Royals players<\/em> to know that there is better coaching elsewhere? That is the most dire of all, but here we are. <\/p>\n

\n

Unfortunately, it seems that new Royals owner John Sherman has bought into what the Royals are selling. In a recent interview with the Kansas City Star, Sherman placed his faith di lui in the front office while acknowledging that fans are growing restless (emphasis ours):<\/p>\n

\n

While Sherman didn’t explicitly refer to Bradshaw, he referred to his trust in the leadership \u201cfocused on improving that performance and willing to make tough decisions<\/strong> to make sure that it’s clear that our expectations are higher than this. “<\/p>\n

So, too, are those of the fans. He knows they are “disappointed and frustrated with us.”<\/p>\n

“I appreciate the engagement of our fans and I get the sense that they care a lot,” he said. “So we’re committed to make sure that we put a good product on the field, and I do feel … like we are ultimately going to do the right things to get there.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

With respect to Sherman, his faith in the Royals’ ability to make tough decisions is misplaced. Moore’s Royals have consistently taken the easy road and not the best road. It is one of the persistent issues with the Moore-led Royals that were just as true when I wrote these words a few weeks ago, as they’ve been true through a decade and a half. The Royals’ consistent problems are: <\/p>\n