2023 – A new beginning for the Royals. Matt Quatraro era begins. A year to see which of our young players will make up the core going forward. Can Bobby Witt Jr become a superstar SS or will go to the hot corner? Will Brady Singer take the next step forward? Will Salvy be Salvy? Will Big Vin or Pratto take first base? Will they find a position for MJ? Who else emerges from the youth movement? Not to mention the development of the new downtown stadium.
Free Agents/Trades Acquisitions
Jordan Lyles, RHP
Ryan Yarbrough, LHP
Josh Taylor, LHP
Aroldis Chapman, LHP
Top 10 Prospects from Baseball America
1. Gavin Cross, OF
2. Cayden Wallace, 3B
3. Drew Waters, OF
4. Ben Kudrna, RHP
5. Frank Mozzicato, LHP
6. Maikel Garcia, SS
7. Tyler Gentry, OF
8. Nick Loftin, OF/3B
9. Angel Zerpa, LHP
10. Carter Jensen, C [Reply]
Originally Posted by Prison Bitch:
Our pitching was an excellent in 2015. We were 3rd in AL era and 6th in runs Scored. We had the only 2 guys he ever produced in the rotation along with Volquez who was really solid. Chris Young was a good 5th alongside Kris Medlen (15-8 with a 3.60 era from that slot)
Also, he dumped a sack of garbage onto Cinci for Jon E Qweddo which only made the rotation that much better. The Pen was so good it doesn’t require mention here
He obviously sold is soul to the devil though because after the year he couldn't make a signing or a trade that worked. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mecca:
So is your argument that once the rest of the league caught on the Royals were incapable of pivoting? They were a 1 trick pony that couldn't adjust to stay relevant?
It became harder, yes. Same way that Dayton changed the game by paying overslot in the draft until they shut that down and we never really recovered.
I think these teams like the Astros and Rays took what the Royals did and weaponized it using advanced analytics and performance metrics, etc.
It was absolutely a Moneyball style thing of zigging when everyone else was zagging and it worked. I mentioned even at the time I think that people were sleeping on how well that team made contact. They might have been the best contact hitting team of all time relative to the rest of the league.
Go look at what the Astros have done since we beat them in 2015 in terms of making contact. They became elite at it almost every single year. They focus on power way more than the Royals did, but they also have a better park for it. The Rays started implementing defensive shifts, openers, playing pitching matchups and taking what the Royals bullpen did to the next step, using relievers to match up and shut down the other team. [Reply]
Originally Posted by tk13:
It became harder, yes. Same way that Dayton changed the game by paying overslot in the draft until they shut that down and we never really recovered.
These teams like the Astros and Rays took what the Royals did and weaponized it using advanced analytics and performance metrics, etc.
It was absolutely a Moneyball style thing of zigging when everyone else was zagging and it worked. I mentioned even at the time I think that people were sleeping on how well that team made contact. They might have been the best contact hitting team of all time.
Go look at what the Astros have done since we beat them in 2015 in terms of making contact. They became elite at it almost every single year. They focus on power way more than the Royals did, but they also have a better park for it.
What they have done best is stay relevant, they became a contender in 15 and have stayed there where the Royals went back to purgatory. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mecca:
He obviously sold is soul to the devil though because after the year he couldn't make a signing or a trade that worked.
Yes but he was quite patient in the lead up which made it happen. Grabbing Salvy Yordano and Herrera off the intl market for pennies was genuis. Obv the fall was inglorious but would we have done any diff? I’d have ridden with that core the next 2 seasons too. [Reply]
Also quite unfair to just dismiss the run as blind luck and not even acknowledge the incredibly unfortunate Ventura death. Had the potential to be a top of the rotation arm and at worst an incredibly valuable asset to sell off when the reality of small market baseball came knocking and instead he's offed. [Reply]
If the Royals were "lucky" to win the World Series, then they were just as "unlucky" the next season.
The biggest unlucky other than Ventura dying was Davis getting hurt before the trade deadline and the Nationals pulling the Trea Turner and Reynaldo Lopez and others deal for Davis & Cain. [Reply]
1. Dayton Moore deserves a tremendous amount of credit for building the scouting department, the development department, and convincing ownership to invest in paying big bucks in the draft and in Latin America. He also deserves credit for making moves to put the team over the top and win it when the window was open.
2. MLB chipped away at one of the Royals' big advantages - paying big money for guys drafted in later rounds to buy them out of college commitments - with the draft slotting. Limiting spending in Latin America also caused a tremendous issue as well.
And Moore and his staff never adjusted.
3. Moore's loyalty paid off in a big way (2013-2017 was a really good five-year run for KC), the cost him in a big way.
4. There was some luck involved in winning the World Series AND making another one. There's some luck involved in any championship (staying healthy; not facing an awful matchup; etc.). But the Royals being good in 2013-2017 was not a surprise to people in baseball, and it wasn't blind luck they made the playoffs and won some titles.
KC kind of lucked into having a dominant bullpen, but again, part of that was development (Holland and Herrera were developed and finished as relievers; Hochevar was re-worked; Davis was acquired with the idea he had upside as a starter but would be a great bullpen arm if nothing else) and part of it was Yost learning how to use that pen to his advantage.
Having great team speed, great team defense, and putting the ball in play were key focuses of the "plan," so that wasn't luck, either.
The only real "luck" factor was in how KC got outs from its pitching staff in the postseason (with a dominant back end and a just-good-enough SP corps).
5. The second half of Moore's tenure was a disaster from a draft and develop standpoint. They doubled down on lower percentage players for too long, and didn't stay at the cutting edge of finding market inefficiencies (too slow to use analytics/positioning data/pitch tunneling/etc.), and then tripled down on that by hiring the final coaching staff they did.
6. Moore is a really good person who was an awesome GM from 2007-2017 (and yes, I'll say the way he approached 2016 and 2017, keeping the core players together and trying to maximize around them rather than trading them off to supplement the next group of players was awesome in how anti-small-market it was), but he led a staff that failed drafting and developing guys from about 2011-12 and on, and it paid off in him being a pretty awful GM from 2018-22.
7. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing, but I'm glad the Royals were able to cash things in. It's hard for small markets to win a WS, as evidenced by the fact that even the smartest smaller markets are winless in the past 30 years, save for the Royals. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Prison Bitch:
You can’t get lucky in MLB. The pipeline of development is too long and the rosters are so evenly balanced (your star hitter only comes to the plate every 9x etc). You can draft a Mahomes or Jokich and immediately vault to the top of those sports but obv mlb doesn’t work at all like that
He (1) had the best all time Baseball America prospect list in 2011, (2) made the gutsy Greinke AND Myers deals and (3) had a huge FA offseason in winter 2015.
He absolutely did not luck into that title. No way
Dayton surely gets credit for a World Series title. There's plenty of organizations better run who have less to show for their efforts. That being said, Moore was certainly lucky with trading away Myers. Moore did not identify Wade Davis as a dominate bullpen arm, and would have been thrilled if they could have used him as a solid #4/5 starter. The fact the plan did not work out with Davis in the rotation and becoming part of the domination with HDH closing out games was certainly quite a bit of luck. [Reply]
The Royals are Kansas City's version of the Denver Broncos...
Without all of the cheating, of course.
They are not good, they are not going to be good anytime soon. All they seem to care about is making money. Where's my $15 beer and $25 parking pass? Geez, what happened to affordable baseball.
Originally Posted by myselff77:
Dayton surely gets credit for a World Series title. There's plenty of organizations better run who have less to show for their efforts. That being said, Moore was certainly lucky with trading away Myers. Moore did not identify Wade Davis as a dominate bullpen arm, and would have been thrilled if they could have used him as a solid #4/5 starter. The fact the plan did not work out with Davis in the rotation and becoming part of the domination with HDH closing out games was certainly quite a bit of luck.
Bit of a retcon there. Wade was a reliever his last season in TB (and was excellent). After starting two years with decent results. They were technically trading for a reliever they could try at SP which they did
He FIP 4.18 in 2013 which was just fine. But when he was a reliever he faced 32 batters towards the end of the season and they hit .094 against him. Also, Yordano had just been called up for 3 starts so they discovered he could be the replacement SP for 2014
TLDR: they knew he could prob do both and being a RP was certainly a possibility [Reply]
