GO ROYALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[aknowledgeableperson]

So is it bad that I want Wil Myers to hit 4 HR today, but for the Rays to lose 5-4?

How about Myers 0 for 4 with the Royals winning 11-1? Playoffs or no playoffs, finishing the season with a better record than the Yanks will be a success.

[bobbyhawks]

So is it bad that I want Wil Myers to hit 4 HR today, but for the Rays to lose 5-4?

How about Myers 0 for 4 with the Royals winning 11-1? Playoffs or no playoffs, finishing the season with a better record than the Yanks will be a success.

This saddens me. We aren't exactly on pace to best the Yanks, either.

[KCMax]

So is it bad that I want Wil Myers to hit 4 HR today, but for the Rays to lose 5-4?

How about Myers 0 for 4 with the Royals winning 11-1? Playoffs or no playoffs, finishing the season with a better record than the Yanks will be a success.

Yippee. Finishing ahead of a broke down aging Yankees team that didn't have A-Rod, Jeter, Youk, Texeira, and Granderson much of the year. FLY THE BANNER!

[aknowledgeableperson]

This saddens me. We aren't exactly on pace to best the Yanks, either.

Yippee. Finishing ahead of a broke down aging Yankees team that didn't have A-Rod, Jeter, Youk, Texeira, and Granderson much of the year. FLY THE BANNER!

Only 2 1/2 behind the Yankees now with 32 games to go so winning more games than them is still in reach. And doing so is symbolic, I know, but '76, '77, and '78 still hurts. With those aging players or not they are still those "Damn Yankees". And I don't mean the band.

[AllThingsKC]

Report: Astros more profitable than any team ever

[bobbyhawks]

And doing so is symbolic, I know, but '76, '77, and '78 still hurts.

Symbolic from the Yankees, maybe. The Royals haven't proven to be sliding in any direction until they have had consecutive, above-.500 seasons. If we go Juan Gone/Benito Santiago on ourselves over the off-season, we can pretty much just accept another 7 year plan is in the works.

[phuqueue]

And doing so is symbolic, I know, but '76, '77, and '78 still hurts.

Symbolic from the Yankees, maybe. The Royals haven't proven to be sliding in any direction until they have had consecutive, above-.500 seasons. If we go Juan Gone/Benito Santiago on ourselves over the off-season, we can pretty much just accept another 7 year plan is in the works.

But Dayton Moore has promised that it's an "8-10 year process." I mean I know he previously called it a six or seven year process but I'm sure this time he's not going to just brazenly push it back further and claim that's the timeframe he'd been saying all along. And yeah I mean I know the Tigers went from setting an AL record for losses to the World Series in three years, and I know the Rays went from last place to the World Series in one season. But getting the Royals to win 20 more games than they did in 2006 is just a process that takes 8-10 years, everybody knows that. The good news is, we're getting right into the heart of that 8-10 years now, so....the process is about to pay off? I for one am not worried that another 7 year plan is in the works!

[beautyfromashes]

I can't believe we aren't running away in the standings this year! How hard can it be to turn around a franchise that has been terrible for 25 years into a dominant winner? We are just over .500 when we only had 72 wins last year. I mean, it's our turn. It's only fair that it's our turn!

[shinatoo]

And doing so is symbolic, I know, but '76, '77, and '78 still hurts.

Symbolic from the Yankees, maybe. The Royals haven't proven to be sliding in any direction until they have had consecutive, above-.500 seasons. If we go Juan Gone/Benito Santiago on ourselves over the off-season, we can pretty much just accept another 7 year plan is in the works.

But Dayton Moore has promised that it's an "8-10 year process." I mean I know he previously called it a six or seven year process but I'm sure this time he's not going to just brazenly push it back further and claim that's the timeframe he'd been saying all along. And yeah I mean I know the Tigers went from setting an AL record for losses to the World Series in three years, and I know the Rays went from last place to the World Series in one season. But getting the Royals to win 20 more games than they did in 2006 is just a process that takes 8-10 years, everybody knows that. The good news is, we're getting right into the heart of that 8-10 years now, so....the process is about to pay off? I for one am not worried that another 7 year plan is in the works!

Are you sure he didn't say, "eight, ten year processes". Only 50 more years to go!

[bobbyhawks]

I can't believe we aren't running away in the standings this year! How hard can it be to turn around a franchise that has been terrible for 25 years into a dominant winner? We are just over .500 when we only had 72 wins last year. I mean, it's our turn. It's only fair that it's our turn!

I dunno, ask the Pirates.

It cannot be stated enough. If you are in a small market and you get rid of one of the best power prospects in recent history, who is young, controllable for at least 5 years, and cheap, and trade him for two expensive years (for the Royals) of a top tier pitcher... you better have a plan to win and win fast. Anything else is an abject failure. 17 of the last 18 World Series winners have had a payroll in the top 15 of the league. If the Royals are ever going to be the outlier, they have to stack the team with pre-arbitration players. Trading those guys away for market price players (though Shields is still below market rate) is a bad idea.

[beautyfromashes]

It cannot be stated enough. If you are in a small market and you get rid of one of the best power prospects in recent history, who is young, controllable for at least 5 years, and cheap, and trade him for two expensive years (for the Royals) of a top tier pitcher... you better have a plan to win and win fast. Anything else is an abject failure. 17 of the last 18 World Series winners have had a payroll in the top 15 of the league. If the Royals are ever going to be the outlier, they have to stack the team with pre-arbitration players. Trading those guys away for market price players (though Shields is still below market rate) is a bad idea.

Pittsburgh ended up right around .500 last year (about where we are now). This year they made the jump. I think we are a year behind their own 8 year plan and will see a contender next year. It's debateable whether it's taken us longer because the GM they hired is better than DM or we were a worse team to start with. I, personally, think we were the worst professional sports franchise in the history of sports when Dayton Moore took over. I'll take 85 wins for this year with hope that we can maintain our pitching staff for next year, get a OF bat and see progress in our young players.

[KCMax]

The 2011 Pirates also got off to a good start and were in first place as late as the last week of July, only to have an epic collapse, dropping 42 of their last 60 games. The Royals might be two years behind.

[phuqueue]

I can't believe we aren't running away in the standings this year! How hard can it be to turn around a franchise that has been terrible for 25 years into a dominant winner? We are just over .500 when we only had 72 wins last year. I mean, it's our turn. It's only fair that it's our turn!

The problem isn't the improvement from last year to this year (well, it kind of is, when you consider what we gave up), it's the improvement from 2006 to now. Dayton Moore has never finished more than 13 games better than the team he inherited, and he did that in just his second full season (2008). After that he nearly completely erased all of whatever progress he had made, finishing with only 65 wins in 2009 (and that after jumping out to an 18-11 start), which is only three more games than we'd won the year he took the job. In the next three years we gradually lurched forward, to a staggering seven game total improvement. You don't get a "turn," you have to fight for it by building a good baseball team. In seven years, Dayton Moore hasn't done that yet.

You brought up the Pirates in your other post, but Huntington has been on the job for a year and a half less than Moore and had that team in first place at the All Star Break in 2011. The Pirates have had two false starts, fading in the second half in both 2011 and 2012, but there's been much clearer direction with that team than with the Royals. Huntington actually saw them bottom out with the franchise's worst season of the modern era -- that was in 2010 when they lost 105 games, and now three years later they're a near-lock for the playoffs. When Dayton Moore got hired, the Royals were bad. Three years ago they were still bad. In his best years they've been arguably mediocre. This year they've shown some spark, at least enough to "contend" for a winning record, but even that is very much in jeopardy given their recent performance. You said you'll take 85 wins for this year -- they aren't on pace for 85 wins, they're on pace for barely 82 wins. That's acceptable after the Shields/Myers trade?

[beautyfromashes]

People shouldn't be talking about Wil Myers like he is Mike Trout. He has 200 ABs and he's already starting to fade. Sure, he started strong hitting a bunch of HR's right out of the gate but he's already fading. Major League pitching always adjusts and who knows if he will be able to counter. I really like Justin Maxwell in the 50 AB's he's played for us. I might even like him better than Myers. The fact is that pitching is a premium and premium pitching is a scarcity, one we haven't had in a decade. I'll take two years of Shields over five years of a promising OF any day of the week.

Also, we should not discount how bad this organization was. Pittsburgh was bad. We were worse than Pittsburghs AAA team. We had nothing, top to bottom. Drafting, development, coaching, scouting...it was the worst of the worst. There was talk of contraction it was so bad.

[KCMax]

People shouldn't be talking about Wil Myers like he is Mike Trout. He has 200 ABs and he's already starting to fade. Sure, he started strong hitting a bunch of HR's right out of the gate but he's already fading. Major League pitching always adjusts and who knows if he will be able to counter. I really like Justin Maxwell in the 50 AB's he's played for us. I might even like him better than Myers. The fact is that pitching is a premium and premium pitching is a scarcity, one we haven't had in a decade. I'll take two years of Shields over five years of a promising OF any day of the week.

Also, we should not discount how bad this organization was. Pittsburgh was bad. We were worse than Pittsburghs AAA team. We had nothing, top to bottom. Drafting, development, coaching, scouting...it was the worst of the worst. There was talk of contraction it was so bad.

Even fading, Myers is pretty much better than most anyone we have. You won't find anyone in baseball that will trade Justin Maxwell for Wil Myers. That is insane. And I like Maxwell too. He is not Wil Myers.

KC was bad, but we had Zack Greinke, Billy Butler, Alex Gordon and David DeJesus when DM took over. Those are useful assets. Put it this way, when the team JUST BEGAN AS AN EXPANSION TEAM, they had fewer assets, and yet became a division winner by their seventh year.

There was never any talk of contraction with the Royals so I don't know where you are getting that from unless you're just exaggeratnig.

[bobbyhawks]

Here is how the Royals under DMGM trend (by losses):

100>93>87>97>95>91>91>(projected 80)

The big jump there is 91 to 80, and 80 hasn't happened yet. The Pirates under their GM:

94>95>99>105>90>83>(projected 67)

Year four was a bad slide for both GMs. The Pirates, over the last three years, have improved +15>+7>projected +16. The Royals, over the last three years, have improved +4>0>projected +11. Which team would you rather be? This straw man argument about how they tanked in 2011 and 2012 ignores the fact that they have been better than the Royals for 3 years now by record and were a 105 loss team before that.

[beautyfromashes]

Let's try something out...Maxwell vs. Myers for each team this year. Numbers per AB. Maxwell- I win. Myers- you.

[phuqueue]

Wil Myers is hitting .296/.350/.463/.813 in 240 PAs. Maxwell has better rate numbers with the Royals, but in a much smaller sample size (his rate numbers are comparable to, but slightly lower than, Myers' for the year as a whole, in 208 PAs). Myers hits for less power against LHP than RHP, but doesn't have sizable splits on BA or OBP; Maxwell is basically a platoon guy who hits LHP far better than RHP. And I don't really know how Myers has been doing in the field, but Maxwell has been ugly at times.

And Baseball-Reference has Myers at 1.2 WAR in 56 games, vs. 0.6 WAR for Maxwell in 59 games between Houston and KC (granted, 0.5 WAR in 19 games for KC alone).

Re: KC vs. Pittsburgh, calling KC worse than Pittsburgh's AAA team is baseless and absurd. Pittsburgh had been absolutely ghastly for even longer than the Royals. The Royals had lost more games than them over the past 15 or so years, but not by a huge margin. The Royals have fielded a winning team more recently. One of these teams was probably worse than the other, but it's hard to tell which -- they were both awful. "Worse than Pittsburgh's AAA team"? Give me a break.

[KCMax]

Let's try something out...Maxwell vs. Myers for each team this year. Numbers per AB. Maxwell- I win. Myers- you.

Maxwell has a ridiculously small sample. Anyone can get hot over 150 PAs (like you say, even Wil Myers!) Let's see what their numbers are like for an entire season. Or how bout for the next six years since that's how long we would have had Myers.

[beautyfromashes]

Re: KC vs. Pittsburgh, calling KC worse than Pittsburgh's AAA team is baseless and absurd. Pittsburgh had been absolutely ghastly for even longer than the Royals. The Royals had lost more games than them over the past 15 or so years, but not by a huge margin. The Royals have fielded a winning team more recently. One of these teams was probably worse than the other, but it's hard to tell which -- they were both awful. "Worse than Pittsburgh's AAA team"? Give me a break.

You're one of those people who read everything literally, huh? I'll have to remember that for our conversations.