Progress Slow, but Royals Are Making It

SURPRISE, Ariz. – When Royals general manager Dayton Moore was looking for help, he didn't sugar-coat the message to prospective employees. There was no talk about jumping aboard to ride the bandwagon back to the top of the baseball mountain.

It was more about getting out to push it.

"This is the greatest challenge in all of sports today, to take the Kansas City Royals and put them back on top, considering where they've been," Moore told FanHouse, repeating the message he had delivered in recruiting executive talent. "Seven years of no consistent ownership. Five years of ownership just learning to be owners. And now we're in this phase where we've got to build it back up."

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Once upon a time, the Royals were one of the most stable, successful franchises in baseball. From 1975 to 1985, they won six division titles, two American League pennants and one World Series. Since then, though, they have failed to reach the postseason even once, the longest drought in the AL, second only to the Expos/Nationals in the majors. Even the Pittsburgh Pirates, in 1992, have tasted the postseason more recently than the Royals.

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Still, optimism is as much a part of spring training as sunscreen, even in places where it hardly seems warranted. That's why Moore could sit at a picnic table outside the Royals spring training complex last week and spend 30 minutes speaking excitedly about where this franchise is headed.

"We get our share of criticism, and we understand that, but I'm confident in what we're doing," Moore said. "I believe in the people we have in place. We are on track to build a strong organization. We have too many good people focused every single day on what we need to do here."

Moore outlined his plan for getting the Royals back to the top. He conceded that it's not an overnight process. Even though Moore, 43, was hired in June 2006, it took more than a year to go through one draft and hire his people.

"The timeline for us really started in 2007, 2008, to figure out how we want to do this," said Moore, who last season had his contract extended through 2014. "A lot of people try to pin you down on the time frame. How long is it going to take? The answer is I have no idea."

The Royals' hopes for a return to prominence are built around three players: Zack Greinke, Billy Butler and Joakim Soria. All three are young and have already performed at a high level in the big-leagues. Beyond that, they have another group of young high-ceiling players who have not yet reached their potential: Alex Gordon, Luke Hochevar and, according to Moore, Yuniesky Betancourt and newcomer Rick Ankiel.

"They have tools off the charts," Moore said.

The biggest specific need that Moore felt he had to address over the winter was defense. Last year the Royals ranked dead last in the majors in defensive efficiency, which is the percentage of balls in play converted into outs. (Imagine what kind of season Greinke could have had with good defense.) The Royals have brought back essentially the same pitching staff that had a 4.83 ERA (12th in the league), but Moore's hope is that the easiest way to make pitchers better is to put better defensive players behind them. It's a model that has worked successfully the past few years for the Rays, Mariners and Tigers.

Up the middle, the Royals figure to be much better with catcher Jason Kendall and Ankiel, instead of Miguel Olivo and the combo of Mitch Maier and Brian Anderson that shared center after Coco Crisp got hurt. Betancourt also has the potential to be an outstanding shortstop if he can focus on the fundamentals, which Moore believes he is doing now that he's gaining some maturity. Gordon, an excellent defensive player, also was missed much of last year because of an injury and an offensive slump that earned him a trip to the minors.

The Royals now have Scott Podsednik to play left and David DeJesus in right, with Jose Guillen limited to DH duties.

"David and Rick and Scott will cover a lot more ground than we have in the previous couple seasons," Moore said.

While improving the defense is one of the short-term fixes Moore had on his list, a long-term goal has been to establish that the Royals can compete financially. They aren't going outspend the Yankees, but the $55 million deal for Gil Meche a couple years ago was a sign that the Royals have some money to spend. They also went hard after Torii Hunter before he signed with the Angels, and eventually signed Guillen to a $36 million deal. The payroll has increased from $47 million in 2006 to $70 million last year.


In the draft, the Royals spent over $10 million on their 2008 draft class alone. Last year the Royals spent nearly $4 million on their first three picks, including a $2 million bonus to Wil Myers, a first-round talent who slipped to the third round because of signability questions.

Last year the Royals also won the bidding war for Cuban left-hander Noel Arguelles, paying the 19-year-old $7 million. Moore said the Royals were last in the majors in expenditures on Latin America from 1996 to 2006, and they are now in the top 10.

"We needed to change some impressions about our organization and our ability to compete in every talent pool that exists," he said.

Finally, the Royals needed to change some of the attitudes from within the organization.

Hall of Famer George Brett, who has been a fixture in Kansas City from the franchise's peak through the lean years, said there was a defeatist attitude around the Royals.

"People in this organization got so used to losing that winning wasn't important," Brett said. "Winning is important. We have to get the players to feel that winning is important. Once we feel that sense of urgency to get out there and win and compete, rather than just be on the Kansas City Royals and accept losing. Losing and failure, that's not acceptable. That was acceptable for a few years, but it's not acceptable any more."

Brett said players Kendall and Podsednik are "dirt-ball, smash-mouth players. We've never had guys like that before. We had guys who, if they went 0-for-4, it was like 'Oh well, we'll get 'em tomorrow.' If we lost. 'No big deal. We'll win tomorrow.' You can't be that way. You gotta be pissed off when you lose. Pissed off when you go 0-for-4. You gotta figure out why you went 0-for-4 and correct those problems overnight. That's the mentality this team will have now."

The optimistic views of Moore and Brett are easy to have in February and March. Truth be told, the Royals still have serious issues because those big three players – Greinke, Butler and Soria – are really the only ones who start the season with no red flags about performance or health. If players like Gordon and Hochever don't take the next step, or if the Royals suffer another year of injuries like last year, then 2010 will be the 25th consecutive season that ends with the Royals missing the playoffs.

After a nearly a quarter century, Moore knows that Royals fans are getting tired of hearing about the long-term plan.

"I wouldn't ask our fans to be patient," Moore said. "They've been patient for so long. What we need to do is continue to build our farm system, and make sure the fans know our main priority is to put a good team on the field every single night."