2020 Royals Official Offseason/Season Repository

[Al Bundy]

Players start reporting Feb 12th.
New Ownership.
Spring training games begin Feb 20th against the Rangers.

[dlphg9]

Originally Posted by Mecca

Basically Dayton Moore isn't very good at his job, he caught lighting in a bottle for 2 years.

No he is not and he got lucky as can be. When you the amount of opportunities Dayton has had, then you're bound to get a few right and he just happened to hit on those at the same time.

[tk13]

Originally Posted by dlphg9

No he is not and he got lucky as can be. When you the amount of opportunities Dayton has had, then you're bound to get a few right and he just happened to hit on those at the same time.

Yeah but even with all his mistakes, taking a small market team to the championship, I mean not many GMs have done that ever. That isn't pure luck.

[tk13]

Some good news today, Mondesi has 3 hits, 2 RBI and 2 steals.

[OKchiefs]

Damn, Singer just isn't very good right now.

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by tk13

Yeah but even with all his mistakes, taking a small market team to the championship, I mean not many GMs have done that ever. That isn't pure luck.

While I think he did well for a period, tearing it down and doing it again in that same market is even harder.

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by Mecca

Basically Dayton Moore isn't very good at his job, he caught lighting in a bottle for 2 years.

This. He’s had 3 winning seasons in 14 years.

And most likely would be on track for 3rd 100 loss season in a row.

[ChiefsCountry]

Originally Posted by tk13

Yeah but even with all his mistakes, taking a small market team to the championship, I mean not many GMs have done that ever. That isn't pure luck.

This. You dont get lucky going to back to back World Series. Outside the Cardinals,and Royals not a single team outside of the top 10 markets has won a championship in the past 25 years.

[duncan_idaho]

What Moore was able to do in the first decade of his tenure in admirable.

He didn’t get in lucky in convincing David Glass to spend more money on the draft than all but 1-2 other teams from 2007-2011.

He didn’t get lucky in completely rebuilding an awful scouting system, especially in Latin America, where the Royals had no presence for decades.

He didn’t get lucky in making an incredibly impactful trade of Zack Greinke, which brought in two future AlCS MVPs and also a valuable trade chip that was used ...

As part of another not-lucky move, the trade of Wil Myers and Mike Montgomery and Jake Odorizzi for James Shields and Wade Davis.

He didn’t get lucky in building the top farm system in baseball.

Now, when the MLB hard slot went into place, the Royals spent four years before they adjusted to the new normal and moved away from betting so heavily on HS pitching (an approach that works great when working from an unlimited pool of $$ but gets harder when your funds re slotted/limited).

He experienced some bad luck with Ventura’s death and Kyle Zimmer’s injury trouble (Zimmer was on track to be a true ace before injuries struck).

The development in the system has been average at best. It has improved over the past 2-4 years with new philosophies and more tailored-to-individual approaches, but it has not cashed in the way it needs to over the 2010s.

As for the farm system itself, currently it’s a pretty middle-of-the-pack system. Starting pitching depth is outstanding. That goes beyond the name games everyone knows (Singer, Lynch, Kowar, Lacy, Bubic) and includes guys like Austin Cox and Yefri del Rosario and Yohanse Morel and Jon Bowlen and Zack Haake and Alec Marsh. The depth of young starting pitching is better than it has ever been under Moore. The positive there is the variability of SP development.

The position player side is lighter than you’d like. I think Khalil Lee is going to be a good big leaguer, even if he never fully taps into his raw power, because of his defense, speed, and OBP skills. I am super high on Kyle Isbel as a David DeJesus-type player (who was very good/valuable for some really bad teams). Those are the only real contributors I see super close (2021). Obviously, Witt has lineup-centerpiece ability. Erick Pena also has that type of upside but is miles away. Same with Wilmington Candelario.

The trio of Pratto, Melendez, and Matias have great potential but huge question marks. If they can get ONE of those guys to be at least MLB starter quality, that helps the system a lot.

It’s not the Padres or Rays or Dodgers system. But there IS a lot more talent there than just the big 5 pitchers everyone talks about.

If you add Kumar Rocker to the system, you’re adding a ready-made ace who doesn’t need work or development (Vandy already did that for you). All he needs is to stay healthy as he builds up to a full workload. That would be a huge boost and also make it possible to start packaging some of that surplus SP to add a few position players to the pipeline.

The 2021 draft is viewed as a very good one right now, so having a top bonus pool will go a long way (especially since KC should be back in comp balance round a).

[duncan_idaho]

Watching Padres-a’s this afternoon.

I love AJ Preller’s work in San Diego and love his aggressiveness.

It’s also weird seeing Machado-Hosmer-Myers hitting in the middle of a lineup. But for a meaningless walk off homer by Alex Gordon at the end of the 2009 season, that could have very well been the middle of the Royals lineup for the 2013-17 years.

Would have changed so many things. If they draft Machado I’m not sure they make the same deal with Milwaukee, and probably take the more P-centric deal from the Nats or something like that. Tampa trade probably never happens.

No Wade Davis in that scenario.

[DanT]

That was a helluva catch by the White Sox CF Luis Robert on Maikel Franco's line drive into the right center field gap to lead off the bottom of the ninth.

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by DanT

That was a helluva catch by the White Sox CF Luis Robert on Maikel Franco's line drive into the right center field gap to lead off the bottom of the ninth.

Gonna be dealing with him for a long ass time, dude was a top 10 prospect.

[DanT]

Originally Posted by Mecca

Basically Dayton Moore isn't very good at his job, he caught lighting in a bottle for 2 years.

The Royals won using a formula that no one had come up with and which was only obvious in hindsight. That took talent and guts, which Dayton Moore has. Going 22-9 in the playoffs over two seasons is not "lightning-in-a-bottle". That's having a unique strategy and executing it well.

[DanT]

Originally Posted by Mecca

Gonna be dealing with him for a long ass time, dude was a top 10 prospect.

Yep. Man, that guy is amazing!

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by DanT

Going 22-9 in the playoffs over two seasons is not "lightning-in-a-bottle". That's having a unique strategy and executing it well.

If that was the case, why did it start and end there?

Sometimes, teams get lucky.

Dayton Moore deserves to be fired and should have been fired after 2017.

[DanT]

Another thing that Dayton Moore has, and which fits right into the Royals culture that was established by Ewing Kauffman, is class. The way he looked after his ballplayers this year with the impacts of COVID was noted throughout the league. I like rooting for classy folks, classy teams and classy organizations.