Seeing how the Royals have long since been in the losing rut, sometimes you are forced to do things you are not completely comfortable with. When a person (or organization) is in one of these pinches the answer you might just need to hear is not going to come from where you might suspect. That is when you go ask someone who is crazy enough to give you the answer you really need to hear.
In the Godfather, the Corleone Family is deciding whether or not to jump into the narcotics business and Don Vito is having some moral dilemmas as to whether or not he wants to pull the trigger. Tom Hagen states that if they don’t get in the game, others will and the family will slowly be pushed out.
Don Vito then turns and asks Mr. Sonny Corleone “what he thinks”. This would be like asking Kyle Farnsworth if the US should double up on the surge in Afghanistan and how that might affect future relations with Iran in conjunction with the Chinese currency peg. Sonny Corleone is usually not who you want answering the red phone at 2 am. So while smacking on some macadamia nuts and licking his fingers Sonny replies;
“There’s a lot of money in that white powder, pops”
Well, the Powder Blue Room is going to put on a white muscle undershit, a pair of suspenders, grab a little brandy and “sweat it out a little bit” as Dayton Moore’s Santino Corleone.
And the message is this,
“There’s a lot of money in those closers, Dayton”
Don Dayton needs to move Joquim Soria for whatever he can get for him, now. Dayton needs to get on the phone and make some GM go all Moe Green and make a bad, bad, bad, decision. No closer (save Mariano Rivera) lasts very long, 2-4 years seems to be the going rate, and good closers can be as close to white powder as anything on the baseball market. GM’s pay dearly for something that gets them nothing more than a quick jolt. They are a great quick fix for a team in need. Trade for one on Tuesday and get a save on Wednesday (look fans your GM is such a wheeler dealer). A quick fix you really regret next season.
In fact, Don Dayton knows this powder business pretty well. He unloaded Octavio Dotel on the Braves right before his pitching arm fell off. He basically received nothing more than a long term option on Kyle Davies, but in the crapshoot of baseball, Kyle Davies could have hit paydirt. Octavio Dotel really didn't do anything for the Royals at that point and Don Dayton made one the better pulls during his tenure as head of the Royals Family.
The reality is that very few pitchers are good enough to fool hitters as a closer for over 2-4 years. The trick is to flip the value before everyone else figures this out. The Powder Blue Room would like to go on the record and say that Soria will begin to fade big time by the middle of next year. Bill James figured out long ago what happens when a player or pitcher looses a step (or mph). If you throw 98 mph and loose a couple of miles on the old speedball you can reinvent yourself as some who throws 92 mph, heck even 88 mph. The moral being you still have a major league fastball.
This is similar to an overhyped sophomore college basketball player who has to listen to Dick Vitale tell him “he’s not ready for the NBA” and that “another year of school” would do this and that. But what Dick doesn’t like to admit is that you leave school when the scouts think you are ready. If you stick around long enough you lose all the glory and financial promise that accompanies “potential”. You better get into the league before they realize you aren’t going to get any better.
Soria has some mechanical flaws that we will not Tom Emanski you to death with right now, but they do certainly exist. The right arm of the Mexicutioner is treading on thin ice. But the bottom line is that the Royals need three-run homers, two-out doubles and outfielders that run down balls in the gap way more than they need Saturday afternoon 7-4 trash saves. The Royals “needing” a good closer is like a person on food stamps having a Monet “Waterlillies”. The piece of art is nice, it certainly has value, is dang pretty but doesn’t do you a whole lot of good when you are hungry. The Monet is probably better off on the Sotheby’s trading block and money in your pocket. If and when the Royals are in a position that a Monet (closer) would look good on the wall, they can quickly assume the roll of purchaser of Sonny Corleone’s powder.
Dayton, pops, my man, trust your wartime consigliere, The Powder Blue Room, and move the Mexicutioner. When Team Corleone was discussing what would happen after the shooting and possible death of Don Vito, Tom Hagan said “if we loose the old man, we will slowly loose all our power”.
Well, Kansas City lost their old man (Ewing Kauffman) a while ago. Don Kauffman didn’t need to get into the white powder because he made his own legal kind with Marion Laboratories. The Royals don’t have the Don around anymore and Dan or David Glass, ahem, do not qualify. Dayton, you don’t have much, and Joakim Soria isn’t going to do you anything next year. Just move him for biggest sucker bet you can and hope you’ve got a Micheal Corleone somewhere in the organization to figure it out later.
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