Disastrous.
It's the word I used to describe the Royals' offseason at the time that they made their one positive move. It is likely that getting Zack Greinke signed to a four-year deal likely will benefit the Royals' long-term future more than the rest of the moves combined will take away from it. Still, it didn't have to be like this.
Let's review. Here are all the notable moves the team made over the winter:
10/30/2008 - Acquired first baseman Mike Jacobs from the Marlins for RHP Leo Nunez.
Jacobs went on to avoid arbitration by signing for $3.275 million. Nunez, who had a 2.98 ERA in 48 1/3 innings in 2008, is making $415,000.
11/19/2008 - Acquired outfielder Coco Crisp from the Red Sox for RHP Ramon Ramirez.
Crisp arrived sporting a $5.75 million salary in the final guaranteed year of his contract. The Royals have the choice of keeping him $8 million in 2010 or buying him out for $500,000. Ramirez, who had a 2.64 ERA in 71 2/3 innings in 2008, is making $441,000.
Neither trade was necessarily awful in isolation. Jacobs was coming off a 32-homer season, and Crisp had the potential to really improve the Royals' defense. The salaries were perfectly reasonable for both veterans. The big problem was that the Royals had to decimate their bullpen depth to get him.
12/11/2008 - Signed LHP Horacio Ramirez to a one-year, $1.8 million contract.
The first of two completely unreasonable moves. One could actually justify giving Ramirez a major league deal to pitch in relief, but the Royals signed him to start and gave him a rotation spot even after he performed as poorly as any player in the Cactus League. Fortunately, they did replace him after just one turn through the rotation, cutting their losses.
12/11/2008 - Signed RHP Doug Waechter to a one-year, $640,000 contract.
Waechter has been limited to three relief appearances this season by an elbow injury.
12/13/2008 - Signed RHP Kyle Farnsworth to a two-year, $9.25 million contract with a club option for 2011.
The second horrific move. The market for average relievers had already been set when Bob Howry jumped on a one-year, $2.75 million offer from the Giants. It never became clear what team the Royals competed against to sign Farnsworth.
12/16/2008 - Re-signed LHP John Bale to a one-year, $1.2 million contract.
Bale was rarely healthy and only moderately effective during his first two seasons with the Royals. Kansas City did make him take a modest paycut, but it was still $1.2 million that could have been better spent elsewhere. Bale has allowed five runs in nine innings while healthy this season.
1/9/2009 - Signed infielder-outfielder Willie Bloomquist to a two-year, $3.1 million contract.
The Royals could no longer afford a real replacement for Mark Grudzielanek as a result of their other moves. Throwing $1.5 million per season at a 25th man, though, that was doable.
1/26/2009 - Agreed to terms with RHP Zack Greinke on a four-year, $38 million contract.
The shining star.
2/10/2009 - Signed RHP Jamey Wright to a minor league contract.
Just in case the rest of the moves didn't pan out. Which they haven't, of course, and which is why Wright is likely going to throw 70+ innings for a major league team for the 13th time in 14 seasons.
2/28/2009 - Signed RHP Juan Cruz to a two-year, $6 million contract with a club option for 2011; forfeited 2009 second-round pick.
It was hard to argue with this one. Cruz would have done better financially if not for the draft pick issue, and the Royals were able to get him without surrendering their first-rounder. Unfortunately, it's another move that hasn't really worked out, as Cruz has struggled mightily over the last few weeks and is currently sporting a 5.46 ERA.
3/09/09 - Released infielder Esteban German.
3/18/09 - Released LHP Jimmy Gobble.
The Royals could have non-tendered both in December, but they kept them and ended up surrendering termination pay in March. That's another $425,000 completely wasted.
It's not pretty going line by line, and the big picture is even worse. Jacobs and Crisp may have salaries totaling $9.025 million this year, but the Royals are paying so much more for them, since it was the losses of Nunez and Ramirez that led to the Farnsworth and Cruz signings. Those two relievers are making $6.5 million this season and $7.75 million in 2010. Nunez and Ramirez are earning $850,000 this year and probably won't clear $3 million next year in their first seasons of arbitration eligibility. The Royals had both under control through 2012. Odds are that none of the four aforementioned acquisitions will still be around in 2011.
And Moore made the moves so quickly. He wouldn't have had to overpay to bring quality free agents to Kansas City. Adam Dunn, Bobby Abreu, Orlando Hudson, Orlando Cabrera⦠they would have taken Moore's money. The Royals had interest in Hudson and Cabrera, but they were already out of cash by the time their prices had come down. It turned out that Moore had as much to spend as all but a few teams, yet he badly misread the market and didn't get a single bargain.
So, was disaster too strong? Probably once the Greinke signing got done. While so little has worked out, nothing here rivals the Jose Guillen signing in handcuffing the Royals' fortunes for the long-term. Still, I think it's enough to put together a legitimate case for dismissing Moore. He hasn't rebuilt the minor league system as hoped, and for a small-market GM, he's thrown a ridiculous amount of money down the drain. The Royals have a deserving replacement in the fold in Mike Arbuckle, who was very well regarded for his work in Philadelphia. It's time they try someone new.
Leave a Comment:
Saving...
i think personally it is way too early to consider firing moore. allard baird had 6+ years to run this franchise into the ground and it's not going to change overnight.
no disagreement here about the farnsworth and ho-ram moves, they were poor, and the guillen signing has turned out to be an albatross. however, i believe that his tenure will be defined by how his draft picks pan out, and you've got to give him that much time before passing final judgment.
As a long-time Royals fan, I have to stick up for Dayton concerning this article. You can't logically call an off-season that includes the 4-year signing of a Cy-Young caliber pitcher for FAR below market value as "disastrous". You also can't blame the injuries of an All-Star closer (Soria), a burgeoning super-star (Gordon), and a massive upgrade in the OF (Crisp) on Moore's off-season.
Farnsworth, for as much heat as he took in the beginning of the season, has actually been decent (4.24 ERA and 1.29 WHIP). Juan Cruz had ridiculous numbers last year (71 K's in 51 innings with 2.61 ERA), and no one saw his recent implosion coming. Jacobs was moving from arguably a top-3 pitcher-friendly park to a team with a new batting coach whose primary niche was designed to be teaching impatient hitters how to walk more (Kevin Seitzer, who had quite the batting eye himself). Crisp was in a terrible platoon that stunted his development, in a park that cut down his line-drive power.
The knock on Dunn is two-fold: his unwillingness to sacrifice stats for situational hitting and his lack of desire to play baseball. I still think he's worth more than he went for and would have been a great move for a power-lefty starved club like KC, but Moore is moving this team in the right direction. If you want to criticize his actions, start with Hochevar and Guillen. Still, without the aforementioned injuries, the Royals are a .500 team in playoff contention right now. Moore has been given nowhere near enough time for an article like this to written.
i have to go with pouliot on this one. the greinke deal was great. pretty much everything else the royals did was terrible.
the jacobs for nunez deal wasn't terrible in and of itself. jacobs is an effective and powerful LH bat. i don't understand, however, why the royals didn't save themselves almost 3 million dollars by keeping nunez and finding out what kila ka'aihue could do.
the crisp/ramirez trade also wouldn't be terrible if simply looking at what crisp adds to the team as a player. the problem was that moore added 5.3 million in salary that could have been better spent elsewhere. while it's true that there weren't many viable CF options as free agents, moore simply overspent to fill one need (CF) at the cost of another (bullpen)
the horacio ramirez signing made absolutely no sense. if you want to sign him to a major league deal to fill out the back of your bullpen....fine. personally, i'd rather just promote some AAA pitcher. the end result will be the same (poor pitching when the team needs innings to be eaten) and the minor league guy would cost less. to sign him to start is just laughable.
signing doug waechter was fine. he's mediocre, but he's cheap.
the farnsworth deal was idiotic. moore greatly overpaid on someone who's proven time and again to be a pretty bad pitcher.
as pouliot noted, the money spent to re-sign bale would've been better spent elsewhere
i don't mind the bloomquist signing TOO much. he's a useful bench player. they probably could've signed him for less money, though.
the greinke deal was great for the team.
jamey wright to a minor league deal was fine. he can eat innings.
the juan cruz deal was fine, considering the position they'd put themselves in. no one would've expected that he'd struggle so much. the problem is that they were in a position where they felt they had to sign him in the first place.
if they'd have just kept nunez and ramirez, they'd be saving millions of dollars that would be better spent elsewhere. along with those millions, they'd have a couple more years of those two very good relievers at a below-market cost.
daniel- i'm not sure where pouliot blames the injuries to soria, gordon, or even crisp on moore's offseason. they were simply unfortunate occurrences for the team. his argument is simply that the offseason moves made by moore have greatly hurt the team both in the present and for the future. and crisp's injury isn't exactly a shocker, either. it's something that moore should've factored in when trading for him. only twice in his career has crisp amassed 500 ABs. he's never had 600. for a guy that's mostly been a leadoff hitter, that shows how fragile he's been.
since when is gordon a "burgeoning superstar?" he certainly has potential, but he's been a relative disappointment so far as a major leaguer.
getting further off-topic... i've never heard those knocks against dunn. first, i'm not sure how much situational hitting you'll ever use him for. second, the only time i've ever heard anything regarding him playing the game was when he said he loved playing it during the WBC.
>>i'm not sure where pouliot blames the injuries to soria, gordon, or even crisp on moore's offseason.
Clearly he doesn't even reference them. My point is that if (pick 2 of the 3) Soria, Gordon and Crisp didn't get hurt, that puts us right at .500, which is contention-range in our division, and makes a "fire Moore" column look pretty moronic right now.
>>since when is gordon a "burgeoning superstar?"
Gordon is 25! This was his 3rd full year, and considering his power and the normal upward career paths that baseball players take in their mid-to-late 20's, a breakout 2009 year was a common prediction. His plate discipline in the 2nd half of 2008 (OBP of .392) combined with his natural power indicated a player that was finally starting to "figure it all out".
>>i've never heard those knocks against dunn
The knocks I mentioned are well-known. It's precisely why his $$ to HR ratio is so low. BUT, I do think his OBP gets overlooked, and his makeup issues took too much heat when he was on the Reds. He became their scapegoat at some point, which isn't completely fair. Still, the k-rate is a problem in any late close game with men on where you don't need a 500 ft bomb, even if your fantasy team could care less.
Moore has shown an ability to pull relievers out of nowhere. Ramirez was his find! If you want to bash him for dealing him away to get Crisp, you have to at least praise him for pulling the guy out of nowhere in the first place. And to pretend now that you had a crystal ball on Crisp, c'mon. He's averaged around 500 atbats the last 5 years (over 600 ab's in '03 if you include his minor numbers). No one could have predicted only 100 productive atbats in 2009. Crisp has tremendous range, something that Dejesus sorely lacks in a critical defensive position. Before Crisp began playing hurt this team was making noise, in no small part due to his April plate patience and defense.
"Clearly he doesn't even reference them. My point is that if (pick 2 of the 3) Soria, Gordon and Crisp didn't get hurt, that puts us right at .500, which is contention-range in our division, and makes a "fire Moore" column look pretty moronic right now."
my only response to this is to refer you to mike's post. he basically says everything i would have said.
"Gordon is 25! This was his 3rd full year, and considering his power and the normal upward career paths that baseball players take in their mid-to-late 20's, a breakout 2009 year was a common prediction. His plate discipline in the 2nd half of 2008 (OBP of .392) combined with his natural power indicated a player that was finally starting to "figure it all out"."
i'm not sure where i said gordon lacked talent or the possibility of becoming a star. i simply pointed out that he isn't one, and that calling him one is misleading. if, as a twins fan, i called delmon young a "burgeoning superstar" surely i would have been called out on it also. some people may've predicted that this would be gordon's breakout year. it's possible it would've been. predicting it, however, does not make it so.
"The knocks I mentioned are well-known. It's precisely why his $$ to HR ratio is so low. BUT, I do think his OBP gets overlooked, and his makeup issues took too much heat when he was on the Reds. He became their scapegoat at some point, which isn't completely fair. Still, the k-rate is a problem in any late close game with men on where you don't need a 500 ft bomb, even if your fantasy team could care less."
i simply meant that you're not signing dunn for his situational hitting abilities. you're signing him to hit 40 bombs a year. obviously he has shortcomings. give me any player except pujols, though, and i can point to flaws in their game.
"Moore has shown an ability to pull relievers out of nowhere. Ramirez was his find! If you want to bash him for dealing him away to get Crisp, you have to at least praise him for pulling the guy out of nowhere in the first place. And to pretend now that you had a crystal ball on Crisp, c'mon. He's averaged around 500 atbats the last 5 years (over 600 ab's in '03 if you include his minor numbers). No one could have predicted only 100 productive atbats in 2009. Crisp has tremendous range, something that Dejesus sorely lacks in a critical defensive position. Before Crisp began playing hurt this team was making noise, in no small part due to his April plate patience and defense."
can you name another reliever that moore has pulled out of nowhere? i'm not pretending i had a crystal ball on crisp. other than soria, the royals bullpen has been terrible this year. the fact is, however, that he's played 145 games only twice in his career. though i don't consider crisp to have "tremendous" range, i do agree he's much better defensively than any of their replacements. my problem with the trade is that had they not done it, they'd have ramirez and an extra 5 million dollars as opposed to cruz and crisp. that only takes into account this year. they'd save even more money over the coming years with ramirez getting arbitration and cruz and crisp getting more money in the future.
>>can you name another reliever that moore has pulled out of nowhere?
Something tells me you didn't know who Joakim Soria was in 2006. Moore also found David Riske for a dominant 2007 at under 3 million.
I can see both sides of this discussion. Firing Moore is pretty ridiculous though. When you are handcuffed by a small market payroll, your mistakes are magnified. The Ramirez for Crisp deal looks bad right now, but Crisp is a good ballplayer when he's healthy and moving DeJesus (who is also vastly underachieving by the way) to LF was a good thing. Gordon will be a fine player. That injury hurt. Billy Butler is not living up to expectations either. I don't like the 2B situation there at all and I don't care what Alberto Callaspo's average is. Willie Bloomquist has played his best ball ever, but he's playing too much. If the team was any good he'd be riding the pine as always. John Buck's injury hurt them. Miguel Olivo is a nice player, but he needs more of a blow more than he's getting. The Jacobs thing was to be expected, particularly since he doesn't know the league just yet. He was never going to hit for average and Leo Nunez's sparkling ERA would be at least a run higher in the AL. They knew what they were getting and how much they were paying for it. It just hasn't worked out. Ka'aihue is not ready for the bigs, but I hope they have plans for him. Anybody who walks more than they strikeout has a ton of potential. The Mike Aviles injury is not mentioned much here. We know he played way over his head last year and the Royals counted too much on a repeat of his numbers, but anything at all from him makes the Royals a better team too. Gil Meche is struggling lately, but they wasted four or five brilliant starts by pitching Farnsworth and others after him costing him wins. He should have about eight wins by now. He's gotta be discouraged knowing he needs to give up three or less and pitch seven or he's going to lose...and he may lose anyway. There is no defense for signing Farnsworth or Ramirez; they both stink and nearly always have, but obtaining Juan Cruz was a good thing hindsight and all. The Soria injury is tough, but they weren't in a position to win that many games anyway. The fact that the Royals are near .500 is a miracle when you take it all in. Jose Guillen's skills are fading a bit and he's still a miserable (bleep). Give Moore some time to work through the kinks. The AL is a brutally tough and unforgiving league. The Royals can't score enough runs to win consistently, they're playing too many slap hitters, their defense is so-so, their starters except for Grienke are up and down, their bullpen is hurting, and their manager is the one who needs to see the guillotine well ahead of Moore. So Moore had a tough off season; he wasn't the first nor the last GM to do so in Royals history. This team needs a serious overall and I believe they will get it. Moore comes from good stock and I'm sure he is well aware of his percieved screw ups. Even with a full squad the Royals would have been hard pressed to go 86-76, which gets them nothing. Patience and stability are the operative words here. I know it's gotta be frustrating for Royals fans this year playing in that weak division and still not being able to compete, but it's not all on the GM (although I do agree 1000% with the non tendering mistakes of Gobble & German...no excuse for that either). With Crisp, Gordon, Aviles, Buck, & Soria out for extended periods and a paper thin bench & Triple A squad Moore deserves a reprieve here in my book, at least for the coming season. Just my two cents...
Overhaul anyone?
The Royals stink, and Dayton Moore has done a crummy job. For a market where the margin for error is paper thin, he filled a notebook with errors this offseason. He got lucky that Greinke signed that deal when he did, I'm thinking Greinke wasn't well-advised to sign it.
The Kyle Farnsworth signing was the single worst GM decision of this offseason. The bottom line is, if you can't get him during a depressed FA market for 2 years at $4 million max, you walk away. And the smart play would have been never to step up to the table with him anyway.
Trading Leo Nunez for Mike Jacobs when you have Kila Ka'aihue in AAA doesn't make much sense for an organization that should be trying to build from within. Even if you get a typical Mike Jacobs season that was a ridiculous trade, and he isn't hitting up to his own lowly standards. Meanwhile, Ka'aihue has a .900 OPS in the AAA ... money well spent?
First off, John, learn how to write in paragraphs. Geez.
And Daniel, I have to call you out on your statements regarding the Royals' injuries. For one, every baseball team has to expect injuries over the course of the season, even to some of your better ballplayers. It's a bit ridiculous to say stuff like, "Well, if Soria, Gordon or Crisp weren't injured, we'd have X many more wins." Injuries like these to some of your players are the norm.
Second, it's quite the exaggeration to say that the Royals would be five wins better with just 2 of those aforementioned players staying healthy. Soria, Gordon, and Crisp are fine players, but realistically, over the course of the season they're individually worth 2, maybe 3 wins over a replacement player. And those three players have combined to miss not even a season's worth of games. And the Royals are 9.5 games out of first place in the lowly AL Central. Get real. Most levelheaded (i.e., sabermetric) analysts pegged the Royals as a 75 win team prior to the season. It's pretty hard to say that the Royals should have been expected to compete this year with the team Moore has put together.
This guy thinks the minor leagues haven't been rebuilt? That shows me this guy doesn't know much about the Royals. It hasn't shown fruits and the upper levels yet, but the lower levels are stocked with players.
>>It's a bit ridiculous to say stuff like, "Well, if Soria, Gordon or Crisp weren't injured, we'd have X many more wins." Injuries like these to some of your players are the norm.
The Royals aren't anywhere near "the norm" this year when it comes to injuries. Obviously you haven't been following the club very closely.
I don't think it is a stretch to project Aviles, Gordon, Soria, and Crisp as all roughly 4-5 WARP guys in 2009 (when you consider who replaced them), and after accounting for the defensive upgrade in center (which WARP ignores), that does work out to around 5 wins so far. And you have to be aware of how much our offense was affected by Aviles and Crisp when they were playing hurt.
Moore has both a great front office and managing background, and he's a very smart guy. Look at Detroit's payroll and look at ours. The Royals' window is 2010-2012, so let's cool the debate a little and give the man some time to see how his drafts pan out.
Yes, the Royals have been slightly snakebit this season with injuries, and no, I don't follow the team regularly. I'll concede that.
As for the Royals' injuries, aside from Crisp and Gordon (whose injuries still aren't that unusual), the Royals have a rather typical-looking injury list. Indeed, compared to the Twins, for example, the Royals look very comparable here, even with the Crisp and Gordon injuries.
Aviles: Yes, he was a 4.4 WAR player last year (WAR includes fielding, via FanGraphs), but it's unlikely he'd duplicate his 2008 offensive success - 4% BB rate! and a high (i.e., lucky) .359 BABIP. Remember Tony Pena, Jr. in 2007 and how serviceable he looked?
Gordon - I agree with Andrew here. Sure, he could have been a star this year, but it's a bit like me saying at the beginning of 2009, "Jason Kubel's gonna be huge this year! He's trending upward, he's just entering his prime, so his WAR is bound to increase by 2."
Soria - He's a great, great reliever, but doesn't get enough innings to be a 4-5 WAR player. (E.g., Mariano Rivera led all relievers last year at 3.1 WAR.)
Crisp - WAR includes fielding (I don't think the dinosaurs at BP have attempted to measure fielding with WARP yet). His career high WAR is 4.8 in 2005. He's averaged a 2.5 WAR since he's started playing full-time. He's getting older. He has great range, but this is partially offset by his useless appendage of an arm.
Re: "Look at Detroit's payroll and look at ours." Yeah, let's look at one poorly constructed team and compare it to another. Why don't we compare KC to the Rays, Rangers, and Twins, all of which have lower payrolls than the Royals. Granted, Moore didn't inherit a great situation in KC, and it's way early to judge if you want to be all results-oriented in your analysis. But a lot of his moves have been baffingly (I'm talking Bill Smith, Kevin McHale-level baffling), and the team isn't looking much better than when he started.
Fire Moore? Are you serious? This franchise went through years and years of horrid management and Moore is battling back slowly but surely.
All you are doing is looking at the major league moves and making a dumb snap judgement on it. You mentioned nothing about how horrible our minor league system was prior to Moore and how he has started to refuel that. You mention nothing how we now take the best available players in the draft and no longer grabbing just college seniors and offering them $1000 bonus to play which was a joke and we are now going out and becoming a bigger player in the international market and with all those improvements, you look at a few moves and call for a firing. You sir, are simply a shock journalist.
Further, as mentioned, you have said nothing about injuries causing a big problem this season. When the roster was intact, this team was doing pretty good but now, we are forcing to put guys in roles they shouldn't be in. I simply think if you are going to print a smear campaign on a guy, you should present both sides of the issue, not just your ill informed opinions and no counter arguments.