Bizaro World

Up is down, down is up and Dayton Moore is a Genius! I had the Jeff Francis signing pegged all wrong (see previous post), not only was it not a bad idea, but apparently it was the best move of the year. Since this declaration comes from a website which has been notoriously critical of Moore, actually that would be the understatement of the year; they think his previous moves make him an incompetent fool who should have been forcefully removed from his job. Less than a year ago the Royals were ranked #29 in their organizational rankings and now they think we've made the best off-season move, not to mention that no one can deny that we have the best minor league system in baseball. The Jeff Francis signing was quickly followed by the Bruce Chen signing, Moore seems to like double-fisting during the off-season; first he steps up to the bar and orders two has-been outfielders and then comes back for two oft-injured lefties. This signing may not be any kind of great fiscal move, but he is automatically in the top three of Royals' fan favorites on a team completely bereft of someone who fans know and like.

All of this transpired around the same time that Tampa Bay was signing players from our trash pile. I say this because the Devil Rays are generally thought of to be a very smart organization and the complete polar opposite of the Royals. Now lil'Willie Bloomquist and Kyle Farnsworth are with the Rays, granted they've signed one-year deals at slightly less per year after spending the previous two years with the Royals. However, considering they are old players who are now two years older, the discounted pay is about right and it makes the Royals' signings of the two not look that bad after all. And in turn, all of this leads me to wonder, is Dayton Moore really that bad, was he any worse than other GMs, have any of his moves deserved the ridicule they got?

Since we now have perfect hindsight, we can look at his most debated and scorned trades and free agent signings during the last few years and wonder if they weren't in fact just a small insignificant part of the ridiculous MLB machine:

#1 Yuniesky Betancourt: His name has produced more words affirming the incompetence of Dayton Moore than any other Royal will, has or ever will again. What the Royals gave up hasn't turned out to hurt them and may never in the end, but the mere fact that Moore was willing to give up anything and pay good money in return for someone who has been called the worst everyday player in baseball drove people insane. In the end no one should argue that Yuni was anything less than a bad/below average MLB player and the Royals paid a few mil for 1.5 years of this service to the team. But, this transaction has turned out to be completely innocuous, the only thing that even remotely makes this look bad is the fact that Mike Aviles made a miraculous recovery from Tommy John surgery and even that is mitigated by the fact that it looked prescient last spring when the only other SS in the organization went down with season ending surgery. That's it, the Yuni story is now over and he is another team's problem.  Yuni didn't like to walk, Yuni did not like to go up the middle to get ground balls and Yuni most certainly did not look interested in baseball at times, but this should go down in history as almost a push and certainly not any indictment against Moore's qualities as a GM.

#2 Jose Guillen: Almost immediately hated by fans and statistical analysts alike, this signing of an past-his-prime outfielder for $12 mil per over 3yrs caused some very deserved criticism of Moore.  The first year with the Royals he did what was expected; 20 HRs, 100 RBIs and he pissed off other teams, his own teammates and hometown fans. It was downhill ever since.  Did this turn out well? Absolutely not, but in the end they got about 1.5 of 3 years at the level of play that could reasonably have been expected from Jose. The real key, however, is to look at this with some historical perspective to other signings that happened and see how it stacks up. 2008 (the year he was signed): Andruw Jones 2yrs/$36 mil+, Aaron Rowand 5yrs/$60 mil, Torii Hunter 5yrs/$90 mil. 2007(the year before he was signed):  Carlos Lee 6yrs/$100 mil, Alfonso Soriano 8yrs/$136 mil, Gary Matthews Jr. 5yrs/$50 mil. If you were to compare it to those signings it would probably rank as the second best amongst that group, and would you really rather be on the hook to Torii Hunter for $37 mil over the next two years or be in the Royals position???  The bottom line is that outfielders who hit a few HRs during that time period were overpaid, much as they still are today.

#3 Mike Jacobs:  Another guy who doesn't like to walk and plays bad defense, but who was coming off of a 30+ HR season. Using our perfect hindsight, this is one trade that can be viewed as bad because it cost a few mil, Leo Nunez has turned out to be a solid relief pitcher and Mike might never set foot on a major league field again. The real complaint about this trade was that it effectively blocked Kila from getting to the majors that year, which was right after a year when he had dominated in the minors. Put it all together and this was a completely unnecessary move, but in all fairness the idea of trading a relief pitcher at his peak value for a guy who had slugged over .500 makes some sense. But if we wanted a first basemen who gets on base, plays defense AND hits 30HRs we probably could have had Mark Teixeira for about $200 mil and change that year.

No team really wins with big free agent signings and they are probably more often regretted than praised, but Dayton's certainly don't rank at the bottom given what he had to work with and the results that came from them, at best they can be viewed as unnecessary. As for the trades, it can be said that he was probably betting against the house, but if you walk into a Casino that is what you are doing. Its also hard to trade for quality when you have none to give-up in return. You would be hard pressed to say that if you were the GM you could have made the Royals into a contender over the past three years, they had limited funds, very few trading chips and were short on young talent. No matter who you are, nothing good was going to come of that situation.

This is going to take some getting used to, but the Royals are on the verge of being considered a competent organization. Sounds weird, believe us, we know but looking back Moore may not have done anything that really hurt the Royals long term and we now sit in one of the more enviable, non Yankees or Red Sox, positions in baseball; young talent + lots of room to spend = good things to come.