I do feel like you're engaging in some grade inflation here. If guys like Finnegan, Montgomery and Manea are considered 'good' picks in order to bolster your resume, then your definition of 'good' is building towards a .500 squad.

Those are first round picks with serious bonus outlays required who will, at their best, be exceedingly mediocre players. If those guys are in the top 1/3 of your roster, you'll struggle to win 85 games unless there's serious star power ahead of them. Which gets back to where I think Dane is coming from - Moore's relatively iffy eye for star power.

So if you are building around guys like that, you need a whole hell of a lot more of them than what Moore's accomplished. And if you call them what I would call them - average picks - you end up with an average to slightly below average drafting record for Moore.

Like I said, I don't think he's a particularly astute baseball man. The health over the overall system speaks for itself; the Royals may have the worst 5 year projection in baseball right now. The Orioles is probably slightly worse, but it's a close call. Their system is barren and their best talent at the big league level is extremely 'meh'. Even if Cuthbert takes a step forward, Merrifield maintains, Solar becomes a 25-30 HR player and Mondesi breaks out, they still lack pitching something awful and with all that development have, at best, broken even on the losses of Cain/Moustakas/Hosmer.

Would you be surprised to see them average 85-90 losses over the next 5 seasons? I wouldn't - and that's due in MASSIVE part to the fact that the farm simply hasn't developed the organizational depth needed to handle this kind of exodus. His first round picks have been fair to middling but his picks afterwards have provided well below that.

As a risk-taker and horse-trader, he's done a nice job. And as a salesman it's impossible to overstate the impact he's had on the franchise. But asking if he's the right man for a bottom-up rebuild is a fair question. Personally, I think he'll fail, but I do think he's earned the right to try.
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I see KCChiefsUS got banned...
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For those that are only casual baseball fans, the importance of drafting or developing a super-star is over-rated for baseball. There's no such position or player that comes close to the QB position in importance and effect on a game. It's simply a sport that works off of different metrics.

So while I could care less if we have a super-star, I do want the right roster that goes deep into the post-season. Super-star rosters rarely have that juice.
Harper, Stanton and Trout have yet to see a championship.

Despite our weak farm system and pending free agent departures, the roster does not look that bad going into next year.

Barring injuries, the rotation is likely set - Duffy, Kennedy, Junis, Hammel, and the return of Karnes. We need to take a flyer on a couple of bounce-back guys and hope that Gaviglio and at least one of our prospects can make a Junis-like push (Blewett, Griffin or Staumont).

Bullpen COULD be exciting if they throw caution to the wind and allow guys like Lovelady, Lenik and even Zimmer (won't count on this) a legit chance to make the bullpen out of ST. Heck...even some of our starter-prospects should be considered for the bullpen if they win a spot.

With a weak MILB system, the Royals still managed to promote two players (Whit and Boni) that were better than most of the guys on last year's top 100 prospects (same could be said of Junis). IFFFFF we can somehow sign Hosmer, the infield actually looks good. Cuthbert or Dozier will be a drop-off from Moose, but I'm willing to bet Mondi will be significant upgrade at SS.

CLE is still the favorite, but they just took a gut punch in the playoffs. Baseball playoff hangovers are real and they happen to really good teams. I don't buy whatever the Twins did last year - it is just as likely they were more the 2003 Royals than a perennial playoff contender.
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DJ pretty much took my post. The market for bats is terrible. Teams like the Dodgers, Cubs and Yankees with huge payrolls don't need position players. They've all spent this decade basically acting like a small market team, acquiring prospects and mostly hanging on to their young talent... not trading them for veterans like they used to do. They don't even have room for all the young offensive talent they already have.

Dayton absolutely made the right call, try to win and if you don't, you get a good draft pick if they walk away. I'd done that 100 times out of 100 over trading these guys for B level prospects just to give the illusion of "rebuilding."
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Potential kff


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?
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i know. me too. with all our free agents, im walking around on eggshells.
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Soler and Mondesi will be good. Lineup should be ok, Hosmer maybre-sign.


Rotation sucks tho, no doubt. Wtf ever happened to Almonte?
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What?
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It would be appear my daughter managed to post to Chiefsplanet this morning while we were getting ready. My bad, guys. I got nothing!


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Details are just starting to spill out but it looks like the Braves got hammered for breaking MLB rules in the international market. Going to be several good prospects declared free agents.
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They deserved to be hammered. There's a reason Dayton didnt go

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Biggest thing I saw - other than being stripped of 12 guys, basically all their Latin America talent - is that they're limited to 10k bonuses through 2020. That's the type of budget Pre-Dayton Moore Royals front office worked with. Not good, gang. Not good. They're not signing ANY talent from Latin America for the next 3 years.

That's fucking brutal.
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Acuna appears safe. I'm not sure MLB could've come up with any basis at all to strip them of his rights apart from "Fuck you, that's why".

But yeah, it seems pretty apparent that they're losing their entire 2016 international signing class. Maitan hurts the worst but that 2016 class was seen to be the foundation of their rebuild and widely regarded as one of the better international signing classes of the last several years. That's gonna sting for awhile.
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Royals add three players to Major League reserve list


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