I've been a Kansas City Royals fan my entire life. You need a brass set of cojones to support this pathetic organization year after year. People ask me why I still support a loser and I tell them it's because I'm loyal to a fault. It's been 28 years since the Royals have achieved the postseason. Seriously. 28 freakin' years. Wow. Despite an impressive month of June, the Royals won't be participating in the 2013 playoffs either. However, our not-so brilliant General Manager, Dayton Moore, believes the Royals are still in contention.
Dayton recently said that any moves made leading up to the trade deadline will be made to improve the current ball club, and not the future. After hearing his quotes, I sat back and wondered if Dayton is smart enough to know he's stupid or if he's the special kind of stupid. You know the kind I'm talking about...too dumb to know he's dumb. I'm going with the latter.
The Royals are 8 games out of first place and 6 games under .500. There are 10 teams in the American League with a better record. Oh, but we're in the playoff hunt, right Dayton? 5 games prior to the All-Star break, I said the Royals were about to embark on the most important 8-game stretch of the past decade. They needed a 6-2 stretch against playoff contending teams in order to put themselves in a position to contend. They started that 8-game stretch with a 5-game losing streak. Season over.
Dayton has been the GM since 2006. He's been given every opportunity to win. In 2011, the Royals had the top ranked farm system in baseball. And then those prospects - well, most of them - made it up the bigs and we found out 90% of them were overrated. Mike Moustakas, the #2 pick in the 2007 draft is nothing short of an epic failure. He's one of the worst hitting third basemen I've ever seen. He sits at 4-66 with runners in scoring position this year. That's not a misprint. As for his other first round draft picks (excluding the last 2 years since it's too early to judge them), Dayton's only quality pick has been Eric Hosmer (2008). But even Hoz has been wildly inconsistent.
Aaron Crow (2009) is a terrible reliever that chokes in the clutch. Christian Colon (2010) is probably never going to make it to the bigs. And then there's always Luke Hochevar - the #1 overall pick in the 2006 draft. Luke is arguably the worst starting pitcher of the past decade in the bigs. The only Dayton Moore draft picks on the Royals that are now producing are Greg Holland and Eric Hosmer.
Dayton continually makes mistakes. He signs garbage players like Jeff Franceour to multi-year deals and trades away the organization's top prospect for a #3-type starter with 2 years of organizational control. He signs rejects like Jose Guillen to $36 million contracts and cannot find an improvement at second base for one of the worst second basemen in the game - Chris Getz. I could go on and on with the ridiculous roster moves he makes.
Despite making so many failed acquisitions and decisions, Dayton has an excuse for everything. It's never a good excuse. And most of the time it's a straight up lie. For example, he claims that the reason the Royals hitters have such a low walk rate is due to playing in a large ballpark so the pitchers aren't afraid of giving up the homerun. Therefore, they pound the strike zone more. That's a bold-faced lie. The Royals see about as many strikes as other teams but swing at a far higher percentage of balls. Nice try, Dayton. Nice try.
