Early opinions on the job that has been done by Mike Matheny?

Just curious what the peanut gallery thinks.
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Haven't watched a single game. Couldn't tell ya, at this point. From the high level view



and Matheny isn't gonna change that.
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IMO we should hope for a draft order based on the combined 2019/20 seasons. Without combining both seasons you get a BS scenario where franchises like LAA, Washington, Boston, etc. can be in contention for a top 5 pick merely because of the ease with which they can lose more games in a shortened season. KC also would be in easier contention for the #1 overall pick if both seasons records are combined. KC would currently have the #2 pick and are barely behind Baltimore for the #1 pick by my calculation.
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Tactically, he has been better than I expected, by quite a lot.

To me, they look like a team that is playing "tight" and I don't love the fundamental defense or baserunning approaches we're seeing. Those are consistent with his time in St. Louis.

I still have questions. Not sold.

I think you just hope for them to be as high as possible and for the draft to be based on this season alone. Then all you have to worry about is being worse than Baltimore this year.

Kumar Rocker is good enough for me to be cool with that.
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Resign Mondesi long term right now. He's going to be sooo cheap.
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Without Rosenthal's 7 saves this year, I doubt the Royals would even be at double digit wins to this point.

How freaking scary is that?
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Here's the thing say the Royals do get Rocker, while nice they desperately need some hitting prospects sooner or later.
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I have no idea if Rocker is good or not. I'll leave that to you guys. What I do know is we need some bats, and we need some ready bats. Whoever the best college bat is who will be ready quickly, lets go get that guy.
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Rocker & Leiter are the top 2 prospects. I don't think you pass up one of them for a possible bat.
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I'd take Rocker and then take someone from our plethora of pitching prospects and trade for some bats.
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I didn't say I wouldn't, it still doesn't change though that pitching prospects are volatile and we lack hitters.
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The problem is we don't have a "plethora". People have a wildly misinformed notion of what KCs minor league system is in relation to projected talent. We have the 37th, 40th, and 84th best prospects in the game that happen to be pitchers. None of those guys are considered a sure thing(or at least as close as you can get with pitchers). Maybe that changes next year if everyone does well and people finally get to see Lacy, but as of now, we have three pitchers with top 100 value.

And here's the rub with our "draft a million pitchers and ignore hitting" strategy. You can't actually leverage our "plethora" until multiple guys come through and we build a huge advantage with our staff. But that means we have to do what we are doing with singer and bubic and when they don't turn out to be anything amazing, their value goes down. Singer is less valuable today than he was at the beginning of the season. So by the time Lacy and mystery pitcher in next year's draft actually toe the mound in a royals uniform, we might have already figured out Kowar and Lynch and Singer and Bubic are just 3/4 type starters. Or some of them get hurt, or stall in the minors. Their value isn't all that amazing. Not worthless mind you, just nothing that is a headliner in a mega deal for a big bat. And suddenly this huge amount of pitching we supposedly have to trade is gone.

At that point, even if Lacy and mystery pitcher #2 are pretty good, we still have no plan B. Salvy will be gone, Merrifield will age out, mondesi may not even be on the team. Who knows if Soler holds up. That's the other flaw here: we aren't one bat away. Even if Witt is a 5 tool stud, we still need several more good hitters. We currently have just 1 guy who isn't even a top 100 prospect who might be an above average player. Heaven help us if Witt doesn't pan out, because it just gets more ugly after that. We certainly don't have enough pitching to go acquire 5 different bats and fill a bunch of holes.

I really, really hope I'm wrong, but the only way this works is if we get unbelievable luck with our pitching and land a best in baseball type rotation because that's the only way we have a chance to be good in 5 years.
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Well aren't you a sorry, miserable lousy son of a bitch.
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Basically Dayton Moore isn't very good at his job, he caught lighting in a bottle for 2 years.
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He's pretty much right, we aren't sporting 8+ top 100 talents like San Diego or Chicago were during their rebuilds.
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