After falling into a comatose state of Royals boredom sometime toward the end of last year, I've been awoken to rumblings that Dayton Moore is about to launch Our Time 2.0, and this time he means it. Rumor this, rumor that, a signing here and a trade there and suddenly I find myself once again interested in this team known as the KC Royals. After being put to sleep by Frenchy ground-outs and Hochevar blowouts last season the PBR is back. Lets face it, if we didn't weigh in on this little tidbit, we'd have to retire our blogging press credentials.
I'll admit it, one of the few reasons I decided to jump back in now was the remarkable prescience of a certain blog post from last February. Who could have possibly imagined that being locked in to paying $12 mil to Frenchy and Chen this coming season might affect future events?:
“The truth of the matter,” Moore said, “is if we add another pitcher … there wouldn’t be room to add that individual unless we got rid of somebody else.”
So let's just forget about the fact that paying B. Chen and Jeff Francouer might be preventing us from having James Shields as our opening day starter, the real issue is Moore's logic. The best we can assume is that Dayton needs to mentally prepare himself for the speech he's going to give Luke Hochevar when he's released and once we add this big time #1 starter, he'll tell Luke that we just couldn't afford to keep him around. Because if not, the obvious question to ask Dayton would be: IF MONEY WERE SUCH A BIG CONCERN, WHY DID YOU NEED TO ADD BOTH GUTHRIE AND SANTANA SO SOON???????????????????????
We're paying those two $17 mil this year, was there really some big concern that they (or their ilk) would get away if we didn't act fast? Obviously if we're considering trading our best prospect for another pitcher, Dayton feels the current staff isn't good enough to win next year, or why else would he be considering this type of trade? This seems like an admission that Guthrie and Santana are nice, but aren't really enough to get to the next level. Santana was going to be released by the Angels if we didn't grab him and I can't believe that Guthrie was knee deep in three year offers. Would some combination of 3 years and $37 mil (1yr $12 mil for Santana + 3yrs $25 mil for Guthrie) not get you Guthrie and Santana substitutes a month from now? The point is that Dayton knew these two weren't going to be enough, so why not wait and get the #1 you wanted and then go for the #3-#4 starters like Guthrie and Santana? Was he really scared that he was going to trade for a #1 starter and then wind up a Jeremy Guthrie short of the playoffs?
Quick draw McMoore has done his annual ADD early offseason player grab, all of which have worked out great in the past (See Mazzaro, Sanchez and Kendall) and now he throws out the above excuse for not being able to take it to the next level. Granted, you may fee that Wil Myers is golden and can't be traded, especially not for John Lester, but if you're considering going all in, don't tell me that salary is stopping you after you just spent 37 MILLION DOLLARS! I'll admit that I like seeing that there seems to be a pulse in Robot GM Dayton's body. However, don't tease us again, make a trade and live with the possibility that it could backfire, but at least you gave it a shot.
Dear Dayton, make it happen NOW! We can't blame you for trading a prospect in order to win, but we can blame you if your excuse for not getting a top tier pitcher is that you've spent too much money on Bruce Chen and you really want to give Hochever one last shot. We also can't blame you if Hosmer sucks, Gordon gets injured and Alcides goes back to a .230 hitter, but we can blame you if they're good and what we're missing is James Shields.
Feels good to get that off the PBR's chest!
