A Minor Miracle.

I have to confess: no matter how many times it happens, it never gets old. I write a column arguing that maybe Dayton Moore isn’t the worst GM in baseball, and I get labeled a sellout by many of my commenters. You guys are the best. Never let go of that passion, fellas.

Maybe I am getting soft. Or maybe my eyes have been opened a little by the events of the last two months. Let me ask a very simple question: have the Royals had a good 2010 so far?

A casual fan, I suspect, would say no, 2010 hasn’t been a good year. The Royals started 11-23, they fired their manager, Zack Greinke is mortal, Gil Meche is toast, Alex Gordon is in Triple-A, and on June 1st the Royals are 10.5 games out of first place.

I would agree. 2010 hasn’t been a good year so far. It’s been a very good year. Maybe even a great year.

It all depends on your perspective. And my perspective all season has been focused on one thing: the minor leagues. The results at the major-league level have been aggravating, but they’ve also been a sideshow to the main event. The business of the Royals this season was the development of what we were told before the season was the best collection of minor-league talent the Royals have had in 15 years.

As you may know if you’ve followed the farm system this season, business has been very good.

It didn’t start that way. In spring training, left-hander Danny Duffy, ranked by both Baseball Prospectus as the team’s #6 prospect and by Baseball America at #8, retired. The Royals’ system is deep, but no system is so deep that they can simply cross off a guy in the middle of their Top 10 list and not feel it. (The Royals are understandably reluctant to talk about Duffy’s situation. However, my gestalt from exploring the situation is that Duffy’s retirement is almost certainly temporary. I am reasonably confident he’ll be back before the end of the season, and would not be surprised if he reports to camp by the All-Star break, if not sooner.)

That happened right after Jeff Bianchi, a Top 10 Prospect and the only prospect in the high minors with the potential to move Yuniesky Betancourt off of shortstop, tore his UCL and was lost for the season with Tommy John surgery. And to top things off, Mike Moustakas, who was facing a pivotal first season in Double-A, pulled an oblique muscle and was expected to miss the first month of the season. I can’t say I was feeling particularly optimistic as the season began.

A lot has changed in the last two months, and I hope to recount the highlights here. I was fortunate to speak with Royals’ Assistant GM J.J. Picollo last Friday, and it’s testament to how many Royals prospects are worth following that despite talking for close to an hour, we weren’t able to cover all of them. I can’t give you verbatim quotes, because my hand simply can’t write fast enough to keep up with everything he told me, but I’ll do my best to give you the main points that I learned from talking with Picollo.

Light broke through the clouds early, thanks to the consensus pre-season #1 prospect in the system, Michael Montgomery. Montgomery entered the season with an exciting combination of future projection and present performance; last year he had a 2.21 ERA split between low-A and high-A ball, and he was didn’t turn 20 until the middle of the season.

Six years ago, some of you remember, some idiot was so excited about a young pitching phenom that he wrote in the pages of Baseball Prospectus 2004, “With apologies to Jon Landau, I have seen the future of pitching, and his name is Zack Greinke.” Okay, I was that idiot. Needless to say, no one has been so stupid as to co-opt that classic quote about Bruce Springsteen to describe a baseball prospect since.

Until this.

“I’ve seen rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

After watching a Springsteen live show in 1974, Rolling Stone rock critic Jon Landau set off a massive amount of hype with that one sentence. At the time, Springsteen had two poorly selling records. Not long after Landau's comments, Springsteen released “Born To Run”, was on the cover of Time and Newsweek magazines at the same time and made the leap from unknown singer to rock and roll superstar.

I'm not nearly as talented as Landau, and I'm not a scout with a trained eye, but after watching Royals lefthander Mike Montgomery throw against the Kinston Indians, it was hard not to want to yell something equally audacious. You could watch minor league games every day year after year and never see a better outing. Some of the scouts at Tuesday's game were debating if they had ever seen a minor leaguer pitch any better.

Cooper was referring to this start, when Montgomery faced 23 batters, allowing just two to reach base (a scratch single and an RBI double), and struck out 13 of them. Despite striking out 13 batters in 7 innings, he only threw 84 pitches. Those of you who listened to my first radio show of the year heard Cooper himself describe what he saw that night. The big take-away point was that Montgomery used three different pitches – his fastball, his curveball, and his change-up – to record strikeouts at least three times each. Most guys are happy with a single out-pitch; that night, Montgomery had three of them.

Montgomery hasn’t pitched quite that well since, but still plenty good. After four starts for Wilmington – he struck out 33 batters in 25 innings, allowing just 14 hits and 4 walks – he was promoted to Double-A. He’s slowed down a little, but just a little; in 25 innings he’s allowed 22 hits and 9 walks, whiffed 22, and even allowed his first homer of the season. For the year he’s got a 1.98 ERA, allowed 36 hits and 13 walks in 50 innings, and struck out 55. Those are studly numbers, and he’s still just 20.

Picollo on Montgomery’s improvement: was throwing 90-93 last year, touching 95…now working 92-95 and touching 97…more efficient with his pitches, saving his fastball for when he needs it…his curveball continues to make strides, as he used to throw a palm curveball his dad taught him, but now throws a traditional curve most of the time.

Picollo on Montgomery’s last start, when he was pulled after 3 innings after his velocity dropped: his fastball ranged from 86-96, was throwing a lot of changeups, admitted to some mild soreness in back of his elbow and taken out. Had similar elbow soreness at end of spring training ’09, recovered fine…probably will miss one start…not particularly concerned.

The first 2-3 weeks of the season were Montgomery’s time to shine. Then the spotlight moved east, to Wilmington, where Eric Hosmer looked nothing like the hitter he was last season, and everything like the hitter he was expected to be when he was drafted with the #3 overall pick.

Hosmer was one of the biggest enigmas in all the minor leagues last season, a can’t-miss hitter who, was doing a lot more missing than hitting – he hit .241/.334/.361 between Burlington and Wilmington. There was the vision issue, and the broken pinky finger issue, but even so most observers were concerned. BP ranked Hosmer as just the #8 prospect in the system (behind Bianchi), while BA had him at #5. Keith Law, alone among the mainstream prospect analysts, maintained that Hosmer’s struggles were entirely health-related, ranking him as the #34 prospect in baseball.

Law won this round, as by the end of April even his ranking looked a little conservative. That’s what happens when you hit an almost unfathomable .421, as Hosmer did in April, in one of the toughest hitters’ parks in the minors. As recently as May 19th he was still hitting .388, but a recent slump (he’s 9-for-42 in his last 10 games) has his overall numbers at .349/.416/.508.

It’s interesting how the narrative of a player is shaped by the sequence of his performance. If Hosmer had started 9-for-42, but then heated and up and then hit .421 in May, he’d be the talk of baseball. But because he hit .421/.500/.618 in April and then “only” .301/.355/.434 in May, some people are starting to get concerned. He’s 20 years old, people! And he’s putting up numbers that compete with the best I’ve ever seen from someone who played half their games at Frawley Stadium. (Hosmer is hitting .325 at home, and .368 on the road.)

The Royals have been affiliated with the Blue Rocks since 1993, I believe – there was a two-year exile to High Desert that thankfully was reversed quickly. I took a few minutes to look up the best seasons by any Blue Rock (including their time as a Red Sox affiliate) hitter with 50+ games and age 22 or younger. Here’s that list:

Michael Tucker, 1993: .305/.391/.456 (age 22)

Johnny Damon, 1994: .316/.399/.462 (age 20)

Mike Sweeney, 1995: .310/.424/.548 (age 21)

Dee Brown, 1999: .308/.431/.568 (age 21)

David DeJesus, 2002: .296/.400/.434 (age 22)

Eric Hosmer, 2009: .349/.416/.508 (age 20)

Dee Brown is a massive cautionary tale for any prospect. He has the highest OPS of anyone on that list, and while he only played 61 games for Wilmington that year, that’s because he was promoted to Double-A and hit even better (.353/.440/.591) there. BA ranked him the #11 prospect in all of baseball the following spring. He never hit remotely that well again, and finished his major league career with 814 at-bats and a .233/.280/.333 line.

If he can avoid what happened to Brown – and I still haven’t heard a good explanation for what happened to Brown – Hosmer should have a very good career ahead of him. DeJesus has had a fine career, and Tucker had a long if not particularly distinguished one. Neither had numbers that matched Hosmer’s, and both were two years older. If he maintains these numbers, I feel comfortable ranking Hosmer with Mike Sweeney and Johnny Damon as the best three prospect-seasons by a Wilmington Blue Rock. Sweeney is arguably the second-best hitter the Royals have ever developed, and Damon is at least a 50/50 shot to make the Hall of Fame.

The other concern I’ve heard boils down to something like this: “sure he’s hitting for average, but where are all the homers we were promised?” I understand this complaint – Hosmer has just two homers this year and eight in his career. I just happen to think it’s ridiculous.

For one, Hosmer is hitting for power. He’s got 16 doubles and 4 triples in just 189 at-bats. Very few 20-year-olds – even 20-year-olds who project to be power hitters in the majors – hit a lot of homers in the minors. But they do tend to hit doubles. Miguel Cabrera hit just 9 homers in a full season of high-A ball in 2002. But he hit 43 doubles, and he was just 19 years old. The following year, after slugging over .600 in Double-A he was called up to the majors and hit 12 homers in 87 games, then 4 more homers in the postseason. The year after that he hit 33 homers.

We know Hosmer has power – he regularly puts on a show in batting practice, and did so even when he was struggling last year. When he was drafted, the book on him was that he had as much power as anyone in the draft, but what separated him from the pack – and why the Royals drafted him over someone like Justin Smoak – was that he was a great pure hitter who happened to have power.

And that, frankly, is what we’re seeing. Hosmer isn’t a power hitter – he’s a pure hitter with power, and I love guys like that. It’s a lot easier for a pure hitter to learn to elevate the ball and drive it out then for a slugger to learn to hit for average. Alberto Callaspo didn’t hit a single homer in his first three seasons and 399 at-bats in the majors. Last year, he hit 11, and he already has 7 in 51 games this year. Callaspo didn’t learn to hit for power until he was 26 years old – we’re supposed to be worried because Hosmer isn’t hitting for home run power (but doing everything else) when he’s 20?

I haven’t seen this comparison, but I think it’s instructive to compare Hosmer to Adrian Gonzalez, another top pick who was considered a terrific pure hitter with power as opposed to the other way around. Gonzalez showed more power at age 20, but when he was 21 he hit just five homers in 120 games. His lack of power led two different organizations to trade him. He finally landed in San Diego in 2006, when he was 24, put in the lineup everyday, and his homer totals since read 24, 30, 36, and 40.

Hosmer’s success this year, along with Kila Ka’aihue’s resurgence, presents a happy dilemma for the Royals: with Billy Butler entrenched at first base (or DH), the Royals may have to find a place for all three of them by 2012. There is an intriguing albeit messy solution: move Hosmer to right field. Hosmer is a good athlete for a first baseman (which, yes, is like saying someone is fast for a catcher.) He’s already swiped 7 bases this season – and hasn’t been caught – and has an arm that is frankly wasted at first base. Could he play right field?

If he could, you could imagine this in the middle of the Royals’ lineup in two years:

2) Gordon, LF

3) Butler, 1B

4) Ka’aihue, DH

5) Moustakas, 3B

6) Hosmer, RF

It’s not the greatest defensive alignment in the world, but…damn. That looks like all kinds of fun.

So I asked. Picollo on the idea of moving Hosmer to the outfield: it has been talked about…he’s the most athletic of the three [Butler, Ka’aihue] and the only one who could handle the move…he will sometimes take fly balls during batting practice…it’s too early to think about now, but after Hosmer’s Double-A season, if everything aligns it’s something we will consider.

One guy who did hit for power at 20 – and even at 19 – was Mike Moustakas. The problem was that he wasn’t doing a whole lot else – Moose hit .272/.337/.468 in the Midwest League in 2008, and just .250/.297/.421 at Wilmington last year. Just as Hosmer had extenuating factors, so did Moustakas – namely the ballpark – but it was hard not to be concerned about the performance from the former #2 overall pick. BP ranked him the #3 prospect in the organization and #79 overall, BA #4 and #80. He wasn’t written off by any means, but he wasn’t living up to expectations either.

But just as Hosmer started to cool down, Moustakas started to heat up, and I mean “heat up” the way you might say “the space shuttle heats up upon its return to the atmosphere.” He recovered from his oblique muscle strain in time to make his season debut on April 22nd. In his first at-bat, he homered. In his second at-bat, he homered. He walked his third time up, and his fourth time up he crushed a double off the wall. Two games later he homered again.

And then he got really hot. In 8 April games Moustakas hit .324/.378/.735 with three homers and 9 RBIs. In May, he hit .393/.486/.775 with 9 homers and 32 RBIs in just 25 games. His month came to a premature end last week when he banged up his knee chasing after a foul ball. The injury wasn’t deemed serious – I don’t think he even needed X-rays – but he’s missed a few games waiting for the swelling to dissipate. For the season, he’s at .374/.459/.764. He leads the Texas League in all three rate categories, and despite missing nearly 40% of the games on the schedule, he’s second in the league in homers, fifth in doubles, and first in RBIs.

And keep in mind, even with all his struggles last year, scouts still marveled at his bat speed. His performance this season might be a surprise, but I don’t know anyone who thinks it’s a fluke.

As impressive as the power has been, the improvement in his strikeout-to-walk ratio may be more significant. Last year Moustakas struck out 90 times against just 32 walks; this year his ratio is a much more balanced 20-to-17. The improvement is mostly in his walk rate, and some of that is illusory. Six of his 17 walks this season are intentional, and I’m sure some of the other 11 are of the unintentional intentional variety.

That’s not entirely a bad thing – there’s a clear connection between walks and power, as pitchers are more likely to work around a hitter if they’re afraid he might hit the ball 400 feet. Moustakas’ walk rate is still not where you’d like it to be – but it’s no longer so low that I think it might inhibit his ability to develop as a hitter.

It’s hard to overstate how much Moustakas has improved his future projection in just 32 games. Six weeks ago he looked like a fine player but destined to be known as the guy the Royals drafted instead of Matt Wieters or Rick Porcello or a half-dozen other better players the Royals could have taken in the first round. Now? Hold the phone.

Between Montgomery, Hosmer, and Moustakas, the Royals have a trio of prospects that are rivaled by only a few organizations in the game. Both Hosmer and Moustakas made Law’s revised Top 25 Prospect list from two weeks ago. Montgomery didn’t make the list only because, as we all know, Law hates the Royals. (If you want to know the real reason why, listen to this week’s radio show, as I plan to ask him.)

If those three were the only prospects worth following, the Royals would still be in decent shape. But what makes this season so exciting is that there’s more where that came from. I’ll review the rest of the system next time.

In Defense Of Dayton.

The genesis of this story began nearly three months ago, when I read this fine column by Tim Marchman at SI.com. Marchman is a fantastic writer, one of the best of the new breed of baseball writers (I loosely define “new breed” as “anyone younger than me”) who combine traditional command of the English language with an understanding of statistical analysis that comes with growing up in a post-Jamesian era.

(Speaking of Bill James, for those of you who missed it, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing him on my radio show last Thursday for nearly half an hour. You can check out the podcast here, under “Additional Programming” at the bottom.)

I will admit to a visceral thrill when I came to Marchman’s conclusion, that Dayton Moore ranked dead last among the game’s 30 general managers. It felt good to see Moore bring up the rear of an objective analysis of GMs published in a national news source.

But after the thrill wore off, I had to admit that something didn’t sit right with me. I looked at that list again, and there at #29, one slot above Dayton Moore, was Astros’ GM Ed Wade.

This is the same Ed Wade who never met a middle reliever he didn’t like or wouldn’t overpay for, a fetish most eloquently expressed by the time he once traded Placido Polanco straight up for Ugueth Urbina. (Polanco, mind you, was the only player of any worth that Wade got for trading Scott Rolen (who was just 27 at the time) to the Cardinals.) The same Ed Wade who, despite being handed players like Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard by his farm system, couldn’t make the playoffs once in his eight years with the Phillies before he was fired after the 2005 season.

And the same Ed Wade who was hired by the Astros at the end of the 2007 season, and for the last two-and-a-half seasons has been either unwilling or unable to convince ownership that a once-proud Astros franchise needs to be completely torn apart and rebuilt, with the result that the Astros right now have the worst record in the National League and one of the shallowest farm systems in baseball.

Moore probably cinched his place at the bottom of the list this off-season when he signed Jason Kendall to a two-year contract for more guaranteed money than his two incumbent catchers, Miguel Olivo and John Buck, combined to receive. The Kendall signing was widely regarded as the second-worst free-agent contract handed out this off-season. The worst? Wade’s inexplicable decision to guarantee Brandon Lyon a 3-year, $15 million contract.

Yet somehow, Moore was ranked behind Wade. I don’t think Marchman’s opinion was in the minority, either – most baseball analysts I know would likely have ranked them in that order prior to the season.

It was at that point that I began to wonder if maybe the perception of Dayton Moore had crossed a tipping point, and that precisely because so many baseball analysts cover the Royals, and because the mistakes he has made have been so well-publicized, Moore was getting a raw deal. I mean, it’s not just Ed Wade who in my estimation is a worse GM than Moore.

Looking at the other names at the bottom of the list, Brian Sabean (#28) drives me completely nuts as a baseball writer, and the fact that Tim Lincecum fell into his lap with the 10th pick in the draft a few days ago does not make up for the horrible decisions he’s made. Moore signed Jose Guillen? Sabean will cover, and raise with Barry Zito. Don’t like the way the Royals have handled Kila Ka’aihue? The Giants brought Buster Posey up in September last season and gave him all of 17 at-bats, then re-signed Bengie Molina so they could send Posey back to Triple-A another year. Posey was finally, grudgingly called up yesterday, and so far is 6-for-9.

Ned Colletti (#27)? The smartest thing Colletti seems to have done as GM of the Dodgers is to take credit for all the great players scouting director Logan White has given him – that is, when he’s not trading them for marginal veterans. Dayton Moore in his entire career has never done anything as stupid as trading Carlos Santana for two months of Casey Blake’s career.

Omar Minaya (#26)? Do I even have to make a case? One thing you can’t deny about Moore – he has made the Royals a much more professional organization. The Mets are a circus. I’d say more, but I’m afraid Tony Bernazard might take off his shirt and challenge me to a fight.

Granted, if you go up the list from there, the case for Moore becomes harder and harder to make. I’m comfortable ranking Moore no lower than #26, then, but that’s hardly cause for celebration. Still, I try to be as fair as possible when critiquing the Royals, and I think that the argument that Moore is the worst GM in the game is completely unsupported by the evidence.

If that were the end of my argument – Moore’s not the worst GM in baseball, he’s only the fifth-worst GM! – this would be a rather pointless article. But it’s not. Moore may rank only #26 at the moment, but I strongly feel that it is simply too soon to properly rank him. And I feel that his upside on this list is considerably more than his downside.

What finally spurred me to write this article is the recent attention given to Moore’s statement about how long it takes to rebuild a franchise. Here’s the story:

On the day after changing managers, Moore ignited a minor cloud burst in a comment on the Royals’ flagship radio station in Kansas City that was “an 8-to-10 process to get an organization turned around and on the winning track.”

Apparently, listeners grumbled that it seemed like a long time to wait. Moore's rejoinder to them and the media: Do your research.

“Look what Colorado did, look what Minnesota did, look what the New York Yankees did,” Moore said. “It took the Yankees seven years. They committed to it in ‘89, and finally in ‘96 they won with homegrown guys. I’m not talking about getting to .500, I'm talking about winning the World Series when I say eight to 10 years.

“To get your team in the playoffs, that’s how long it takes. Terry Ryan and the Minnesota Twins had a well-built farm system, and they started in ‘94 when Terry took over, and for seven straight years they had 87 to 97 losses. In year eight, they were above .500, and in year nine they were in the playoffs. That’s all I said. It just amazes me that guys don't do their own research.”

In a city where Carl Peterson’s five-year plan became famous, I can understand why Dayton Moore’s comments about an eight-to-ten-year process might became infamous, something they are well on their way to doing.

Having said that, I’m going to do something I don’t do very often: I’m going to cut Moore some slack.

For one thing, what Moore said is technically accurate, if perhaps phrased awkwardly. I’m not prepared to comment on whether the Yankees or Twins needed seven years to truly rebuild their organizations without doing a ton of research. (Don’t put it past me at some point.) But think of it this way: if a new GM focuses on drafting high school talent – which Moore generally does – then he’s generally drafting guys who are 18 years old. Players typically peak between the ages of 26 and 28. That’s eight-to-ten years after they were drafted.

So yes, in a strictly technical sense what Moore is trying to accomplish will take eight to ten years to reach full maturity. That doesn’t mean it will take eight to ten years to be able to adequately judge his performance as a GM, mind you. But it’s true that if Moore was hired with the express purpose of rebuilding the Royals’ organization – not just the major league team, but the pipeline of talent which extends from the draft and the Dominican to the majors – that’s a process that simply can’t be done in three or four or even six years.

Moore was hired four years ago today, and in terms of major league performance, the Royals’ improvement can only be measured with calipers and a micrometer. The Royals went 118-156 (.431) from the day Moore was hired through the end of the 2007 season. From Opening Day 2008 until today, they are 161-214 (.429). This is not progress. This is why Royals’ fans have a legitimate beef with Moore: THE TEAM IS NOT GETTING BETTER.

Meanwhile, in Seattle Jack Zduriencik is hired as the GM after the 2008 season, and in the span of one winter improves his team so dramatically that the Mariners, losers of 101 games in 2008, improved by 24 wins to an 85-77 record in 2009.

What Jack Z did with the Mariners last year, immediately upgrading his team by pruning the dead weight and making shrewd trades for players like Franklin Gutierrez, we’ll call the “Seattle Way”. Moore has shown no ability to build a team the Seattle Way. But just because he has been a complete failure at the Seattle Way, it does not necessarily follow that he will be a failure at building a team the Minnesota Way, or what I prefer to call the Tampa Bay Way.

Tampa Bay has the best record in baseball at 34-17, and virtually their entire roster consists of players who were either drafted by the team, or who were traded for before they had established themselves in the majors. Their only contributors who were signed as free agents were Carlos Pena (who was nearly 29 and had passed through four other organizations before the Rays signed him); the recently-released Pat Burrell; and bullpen reclamation sensation Joaquin Benoit. Four of their five starters and six of their nine hitters most days have never played for another major-league team.

But here’s the thing about the Rays – they had to suck for a long time to get to where they are now. They had to suck for a long time because their previous GM, Chuck LaMar, was only adequate at drafting talent and was a disaster at every other component of his job, which is why he was fired by new ownership after the 2005 season – after eight seasons on the job. The Rays drafted a fair amount of talent under his tenure, though nothing impressive given their perennially-high draft positions: Aubrey Huff in the 5th round in 1998, Carl Crawford in the 2nd round in 1999, James Shields in the 16th round in 2000, B.J. Upton with the #2 pick in 2002. In 2004 the Rays’ first three picks were Jeff Niemann, Reid Brignac, and Wade Davis. And he made arguably the most lopsided trade of the decade when he turned Victor Zambrano into Scott Kazmir.

But it took a new GM in Andrew Friedman to shape that talent into a winning team. He did that in part by trading some of the talent that Lamar left him in a stunning series of shrewd moves: Huff for a minor-leaguer named Ben Zobrist; Seth McClung for Grant Balfour; and the celebrated trade of former #1 overall pick Delmon Young, along with Brendan Harris and Jason Pridie, to Minnesota in exchange for Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett. (And yes, Royals fans, he also traded Joey Gathright for J.P. Howell.)

And then Friedman also struck gold in his first few drafts. His very first draft pick was Evan Longoria, taken with the #3 overall pick in 2006; in 2007, with the first pick in the draft, the Rays selected David Price.

My point – which I think I’m doing a poor job of conveying here – is that the Rays didn’t go from being the laughingstock of baseball to a World Series appearance overnight, even though a glance at their win-loss records would have you think exactly that. The Rays were building towards their 2008 AL pennant for a decade, in fits and starts. There were more fits than starts under LaMar, which is why he was fired, but he left at least the framework for the player development machine that Friedman and friends perfected. Today, the Rays don’t just have the best record in baseball. More importantly, in my estimation they have wrested from the Minnesota Twins the title once proudly claimed by the Royals 30 years ago: the title of Baseball’s Model Franchise.

The Tampa Bay Way, by its very nature, takes much, much longer to see to fruition than the Seattle Way. It is a much more ambitious goal. But if a GM of a small-market team has to commit to only one path, the choice is clear. The Tampa Bay Way is the road less-travelled. That is the path Dayton Moore is on, and while I have no idea if he’ll get there, I can’t overstate how happy I am with his choice. The Seattle Way got us the 2003 season. I’m looking for something a little more substantial and long-lasting than that.

After all, while the Mariners went 85-77 last season, as I write this they have a worse record (19-30) in 2010 than the Royals (21-30) do. They have a worse record despite a payroll that is $26 million higher than the Royals’. And most importantly of all, they have a farm system in much worse shape than the Royals do.

None of this is to disparage the job done by Zduriencik, who has been on the job barely 18 months. But that’s just the point: rebuilding an organization for the long haul takes time. And at this moment in time, if the Royals and Mariners had the opportunity to swap all the talent in their organization – every player, in the majors and in the minors, with their existing contract situation – only one GM would jump at that chance. And it wouldn’t be Dayton Moore.

The rebuttal to this is that while it’s great that Moore is going the Tampa Bay route and trying to build a team through his farm system, there’s no law that precludes him from doing both – there’s no reason why he can’t do what Zduriencik has done while waiting for his draft picks to finish cooking. And this is absolutely true. Moore’s attempt at stopgap measures has led to a whole lot of Jose Guillens and Jason Kendalls and even Horacio Ramirezes.

My point is simply that we can not define Moore’s tenure solely by his free agent mistakes. His trading record is actually better than you might think; while he has given up Howell, Leo Nunez, and Ramon Ramirez for almost nothing, those three trades combined are neutralized by swapping Billy Buckner for Alberto Callaspo. Kyle Davies is maddening, but he sure beats having Octavio Dotel for another eight innings. Toss in the Ambiorix Burgos-for-Brian Bannister trade, and I’d argue that Moore’s trading ledger, on the whole, is in the black. The Yuniesky Betancourt trade drives me nuts as much for what it represents as for what it did to the team, but while the trade cost the Royals plenty in money and opportunity, with Dan Cortes struggling to a 4.82 ERA in Double-A this year, it may not have cost them much in the way of prospects.

So I’m going to take the somewhat unpopular stance of defending Dayton Moore, and arguing that he deserves to keep his job at least through the end of next season. Four years after he was hired, the major league team may not have improved one bit – but the minor league system has improved dramatically. The last two months, in particular, have been the most exciting two months I’ve ever had covering the Royals’ farm system.

Moore strikes me as the general managerial equivalent of one of the tools-laden prospects he is so enamored with drafting: he has one top-of-the-line tool in his ability to evaluate amateur talent and build a farm system, but a couple of gaping weaknesses in the guise of an outdated understanding of the mechanics of building an offense, and a fetish for veteran dependability over actual talent.

So here are the unanswerable questions: will he be able to convert those tools into skills, and will he be able to minimize the holes in his game over time? In other words, is he the GM equivalent of Derrick Robinson, or of Yuniesky Betancourt? With prospects, the biggest determinant of their ability to improve is their age, but there’s no substitute for an aptitude to learn. The same with general managers. Moore is still young enough in GM years to improve, but first he has to show a willingness to do so. He's done a much better job at developing prospects than LaMar did at the same stage in his tenure. But if he doesn't show an ability to learn from his mistakes, then he'll meet the same fate.

So here’s the deal I’ll cut with Moore: I’ll continue to defend him as a GM despite the millions he’s spent on useless free agents, and despite his panic trade for Betancourt, and despite – the worst move of his career, even if he was not directly responsible – letting his manager ruin the arm of his second-best (and most-expensive) pitcher in Gil Meche. I’ll continue to make the point that all the free agent signings and trades are just window dressing for his real job, which is to draft and develop players better than his peers, get those players to the majors, and start to kick ass.

But in return Moore has to promise me this: if you want to tell us fans to “trust the process”, then dammit, you need to TRUST THE PROCESS. David Glass didn’t hire you to slap a $3 million-a-year band-aid named Jason Kendall behind the plate and call it progress. He hired you to develop more home-grown talent than anyone else, and then put that talent on the field.

The talent you’ve drafted since you were hired has not arrived yet, and that’s completely understandable. We knew when Mike Moustakas was drafted in 2007 that it would take at least three years before he would be ready. It’s been almost three years, and he’s almost ready.

But where Moore has deviated the most from The Process of building from within is that he doesn’t seem willing to win with talent drafted by the Royals – only with talent acquired by him. Players he inherited from Allard Baird might as well have been wearing Indians uniforms. I’m not talking about the blue-chip first-rounders like Zack Greinke and Billy Butler, although Alex Gordon certainly has been handled poorly. But if you’re a second-tier holdover from the Baird years – good luck.

Leo Nunez was one of Baird’s shrewdest acquistions – pilfered from the Pirates for the last six games of Benito Santiago’s career. He was traded to the Marlins to get Mike Jacobs. Kila Ka’aihue is now enjoying his third year in Omaha. Mike Aviles needed a historic performance by Tony Pena Jr. to get a chance to play – and after hitting .325 as a rookie, underwent Tommy John surgery and came back only to find his job taken by Betancourt. John Buck hit a quietly impressive .247/.299/.487 last season, but was let go because the Royals wanted to give the job to Kendall. Buck signed with the Blue Jays for less money than Kendall got, and is hitting .267/.315/.533 so far.

Maybe it’s just coincidence that almost every young player that wasn’t acquired by Moore has had to play twice as well to get an opportunity. It’s rapidly becoming a moot point, because if and when Ka’aihue gets a chance to play, with Carlos Rosa exiled to Arizona the only legitimate prospect I can think of that predates Moore in the organization is Jeff Bianchi.

What Moore needs to realize is that Royals fans aren’t stupid, and we’re not nearly as impatient as he thinks. We understand that young players are going to take their lumps, and some of them might even be busts, but it’s worth playing them anyway because it’s the only chance we've got to win. Moore thinks Royals fans want to watch Rick Ankiel because he’s a big name, when the reality is that we’d much rather watch Mitch Maier – incidentally, a Baird signing – who if nothing else is cheap, has a very patient approach at the plate, and gives 100% effort all the time. We’d like Maier even if he wasn’t hitting .272/.357/.376, but since he is, we love him, and we’re all dreading the day that he has to go back to riding the pine because it’s time to show off your one-trick pony again.

The Royals may be 21-30 right now, but the saddest part of their record is who’ve they achieved it with. Just nine of the 25 players on the roster are home-grown: four hitters (Butler, DeJesus, Maier, Aviles) and five pitchers (Greinke, Hochevar, Soria, Dusty Hughes, Blake Wood). (I’m not counting Victor Marte, whose stay with the Royals is likely to be brief and unhelpful.) If you include players who were acquired very early in their major-league careers, you can add Callaspo and Bannister to make 11. That’s still too few.

In the same article I linked to above, Moore says, “Our goal by 2013, 2014 is to have the majority of our 25-man roster be homegrown players.” I’ll go further than that: there’s no reason why a majority of our 25-man roster can’t be homegrown players by next year. Dayton, you’re sitting on as much minor league talent as I’ve ever seen in the organization, and you deserve a tremendous amount of credit for it. (And I can’t wait to write about it in my next column.) But if you go out next winter and sign this year’s version of Scott Podsednik because you’re afraid Derrick Robinson isn’t ready or you don’t think a David Lough/Jordan Parraz platoon will work or you just think the Royals need another infusion of buzzwords like experience and veteran presence, I’m going to have an aneurysm.

You might be right, and it might take eight to ten years to build a perennial World Series contender. But we’re not asking you to build a contender. We’re just asking you to play the kids. Stop putting up roadblocks for your young players, Dayton, and Trust The Process. And then maybe we’ll trust you.

Ned.

Six days into the Ned Yost era, and I’m convinced that he is the managerial equivalent of a Rorschach Blot. What you see in him says less about him than it does about you. So I’ll do my best to break down his track record as dispassionately as possible.

The Case For Ned

Ned Yost was hired by the Milwaukee Brewers after the 2002 season. The Brewers went 56-106 in 2002, the worst of 10 consecutive losing seasons. (By comparison, the Royals went 59-109 in the last 168 games of Trey Hillman’s career, and last year was their 14th losing season in the last 15 years.)

The Brewers lost 94 games in each of his first two seasons – then reached .500 in 2005. By 2007, they were over .500 again at 83-79. They would win 90 games in his final season, and went to the playoffs for the first time in 26 years.

Yost won 83 games twice in his career before he was hired by the Royals. Not one manager the Royals have employed since Dick Howser – Mike Ferraro, Billy Gardner, John Wathan, Hal McRae, Bob Boone, Tony Muser, Tony Pena, Buddy Bell, and Trey Hillman (phew!) – had ever won 83 games as a manager even once prior to joining the Royals.

The Case Against Ned

While the Brewers won 90 games in his final season, Yost wasn’t their manager in the playoffs. At the end of August, the Brewers were 80-56, which was the second-best record in the National League; they had a 5.5 game lead on the wild card. They then lost 11 of their next 14 games, a streak which was punctuated by a four-game sweep by the Phillies. They went into that series with a 4-game lead on Philly, and came out of it tied. Yost was fired the next day. It was an almost unprecedented move in baseball history: a manager being fired, in September, with his team in the midst of a pennant race.

This was the second straight year that the Brewers had faded from the pennant race down the stretch. In 2007, the Brewers went into the All-Star Break 49-39, leading the NL Central by 4.5 games. As late as September 18th, they were tied with the Cubs for first place. But they stumbled over the final two weeks, finishing 5-7 and losing the division by two games.

Yost was replaced by his third-base coach, Dale Sveum. After losing four of his first five games, Sveum skippered Milwaukee to five straight wins. After losing the penultimate game of the season, the Brewers found themselves tied with the Mets with one game to go. The Brewers turned to their ace, C.C. Sabathia, who on three days’ rest threw a complete game and won, 3-1. The Mets lost at home to Florida, 4-2, and Milwaukee was in the playoffs. But without Sabathia available to start twice in the NLDS, they were dispatched by the Phillies in four games.

The Case For Ned

As manager of the Brewers, Yost presided over an impressive resurgence of the team’s farm system – a farm system directed by Jack Zduriencik, now the GM of the Seattle Mariners – and to his credit, Yost was quite successful at turning young hitting prospects into good major-league hitters. They include:

- Scott Podsednik, who was picked up off waivers from the Mariners after the 2002 season. Pods, at that point, was a Triple-A journeyman who had all of 26 major-league at-bats and had hit just .279/.347/.425 in Triple-A, at the age of 26. Yost broke him in slowly in 2003, using him off the bench for the first month of the season before installing him at the top of the lineup in mid-May. Podsednik would hit .314/.379/.443 and score 100 runs, finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting. The following year he hit just .244, but smacked 12 homers and led the league with 70 steals. He was traded after the season to the White Sox, and was the leadoff hitter for the World Champions.

- Rickie Weeks, the #2 overall pick in the 2003 draft, came up as a 22-year-old rookie in 2005. Weeks, like another college hitter drafted #2 overall, has yet to reach the promise of his draft position; he developed considerable patience to go along with good power for a second baseman, but his defense has never been stellar and he has battled injuries and a chronically-low batting average. He’s still a good player.

- Bill Hall, who was a minor league player of little note when Yost arrived – in 2002, Hall hit .228 with 4 homers in Triple-A, and in 2003 he improved to .282 but still with only 5 homers. He came up late in 2003 and hit 5 more homers in just 52 games, batting .261/.298/.458 overall. As a utility infielder in 2004, he hit .238/.276/.374 with 9 homers; in 2005, he continued to play all over the infield, and hit .291/.342/.495 with 17 homers.

In 2006, Yost installed Hall as his everyday shortstop, and Hall hit .270/.345/.553 with 35 home runs. He fell off quickly after that; by 2008, Yost’s last season in Milwaukee, Hall hit .225/.293/.396. But for two seasons he was one of the best-hitting middle infielders in the National League, not bad for a guy who projected as a bench guy at best.

- Despite his terrific 2006 season as a shortstop, Hall was moved to center field for the 2007 season to make way for J.J. Hardy, who unlike Hall was considered a top prospect in the minors. Hardy actually hit .246/.319/.388 in 159 games for the Brewers in 2005-06, but was lost for the season with an injury on May 16th, when Hall took over. Healthy in 2007, at age 24 Hardy hit .277/.323/.463 with 26 homers, and hit .283/.343/.478 with 24 homers in 2008, with excellent defense both years.

Coincidentally or not, after Yost was fired Hardy struggled. Battling injuries last season, he hit just .229/.302/.357, and he was traded to Minnesota after the season for Carlos Gomez.

- Corey Hart was a well-regarded minor-leaguer but not a top prospect; he cracked the bottom of Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospect list at #91 before the 2003 season. That year he hit .302/.340/.467 as a 21-year-old in Double-A, and fell off the list the next year. He spent all of 2004 and 2005 in Triple-A, hitting .281/.342/.485 and .308/.377/.536. In 2006 he hit .320/.391/.560 in 26 games in Nashville, finally earning a call up. He hit .283/.328/.468 in 87 games as a rookie.

In 2007, he became a full-time starter and hit .295/.353/.539; in 2008 he regressed to .268/.300/.459, but made his first All-Star team. He was a 20-20 player both seasons.

- Prince Fielder, selected #7 overall in the 2002 draft (one pick after Zack Greinke; rumor has it the Royals were deliberating between both players), was a monster in the minor leagues – he ranked among Baseball America’s #15 prospects three straight seasons. In 2005, he hit .291/.388/.569 in Triple-A at age 21, hitting 28 homers in just 103 games.

Like another big left-handed hitting first baseman, Fielder languished on the bench for much of that season, getting just 59 at-bats despite sending the better part of two months on the major-league roster. The next season he was installed as the Brewers’ everyday first baseman, and hit .271/.347/.483 with 28 homers. It was a stacked year for rookies, and he got just two third-place votes in Rookie of the Year voting. But as a sophomore he was even better, leading the NL with a Brewers-record 50 homers. He’s been one of the best hitters in baseball ever since.

- Fielder, though, isn’t even the best hitter on his team, because of Ryan Braun, the #5 pick in the 2005 draft (two picks after Alex Gordon). Braun crushed the ball in the minors, hitting .313/.375/.572 in 199 minor league games, and was called up to the majors on May 25th, 2007, less than 2 years after he was drafted (and just six weeks after Gordon debuted).

Braun doubled in his first game, homered in his second, and he was off: he hit .324/.370/.634 as a rookie, won Rookie of the Year honors despite playing in just 113 games, and led the league in slugging, which is even more remarkable when you consider he fell slightly short of the 502 plate appearances required to be eligible. Braun was a miserable defensive third baseman, though, so – sound familiar? – he was moved to left field the next season, where his glove is still bad but not nearly as costly. He hit .288/.335/.553 in a solid sophomore season, and has been even better since.

That’s an impressive group of talent. In 2008, Yost’s final year with the team, six of his eight lineup spots were filled with home-grown players that he had personally developed – the guys above minus Podsednik, who had been traded for Carlos Lee. The only veterans in the lineup that year were Jason Kendall (surprise!) and shrewd free-agent signing Mike Cameron.

Yost proved he could work with different kinds of hitters; the pure take-and-rake approach of Fielder, the rake-and-rake-some-more stylings of Braun and Hart; the waterbug leadoff hitter approach of Podsednik. The only player of the seven that you could argue didn’t reach his potential with Yost was Weeks, who continues to tantalize and frustrate the Brewers long after Yost left. Meanwhile, there doesn’t appear to be any outright failures among Brewers prospects to develop. The biggest miss was Nelson Cruz, who got all of five at-bats with Milwaukee before he was packaged with Carlos Lee to Texas in 2005, where three years later he blossomed into one of the game’s most underrated hitters.

But that’s hard to pin on Yost. He was asked to turn seven players – six prospects from the farm system and one minor league veteran – into major leaguers, and he succeeded seven times.

Yost also turned Keith Ginter, who had been acquired in a deadline dump for Mark Loretta in 2002, into a useful player for two seasons. Ginter was then traded to Oakland for Nelson Cruz, and 51 games later was out of the majors. After Yost’s first season, the Brewers traded Richie Sexson to Arizona for a package of talent, including his successor, Lyle Overbay, who had played just 87 games as a rookie. Yost made him his everyday first baseman and Overbay hit .301, leading the league with 53 doubles. Overbay was traded to Toronto two years later to make room for Prince Fielder; the hitter acquired in the deal, Gabe Gross, had the best year of his career for Yost in 2006.

Really, about the only blemish I can find on Yost’s record with developing hitters is that he had Russ Branyan on his team – twice! – and like every other manager before him, didn’t see fit to give him an everyday job. On the other hand, with Overbay playing first base in Branyan’s first go-round with the team, and Prince Fielder entrenched there the second time, it’s not clear where Branyan could have played every day.

Yost’s track record for developing hitters is truly impressive, and much better than I thought it would be when I started this analysis. For a team that is down to its last chance with Alex Gordon, a team that is just starting to realize that Kila Ka’aihue is one of the four best hitters in the organization right now, a team that has Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer and Derrick Robinson coming down the pike between now and the end of next season – as a Royals fan, I don’t have the slightest hesitation in trusting Yost with the future of our offense.

The Case Against Ned

That’s great that he developed all those hitters, but how much credit does he really deserve? He was the beneficiary of a ridiculous amount of hitting talent that the Brewers drafted and developed – it’s no surprise that the guy who was really responsible for landing all those guys got hired as the GM of the Seattle Mariners.

And if you didn’t see any pitchers on the list above, that’s not an oversight. Under Yost, the Brewers produced almost no starting pitchers of any note. Ben Sheets had already established himself in the rotation before Yost got there.

In Yost’s six seasons as manager of the Brewers, the only starting pitcher developed by the franchise to last even a full season in a rotation is Yovani Gallardo.

The Case For Ned

You can’t wave away all the hitters that Yost developed as a product of the farm system, and then blame him for all the pitchers that the farm system didn’t develop. During his time with the Brewers, the top pitching prospects on the farm were Mike Jones and Mark Rogers, who both blew their arms out before they ever touched foot on a major-league mound. Former top prospect Nick Neugebauer, who was one of the hardest throwers in baseball and who made 12 starts for the Brewers in 2002 at the age of 21, had already blown out his arm before Yost arrived and was never heard from again. Other top prospects like Jose Capellan profiled best as relievers.

Meanwhile, Yost did the best he could with the players he was given. Doug Davis was a 27-year-old southpaw who had washed out of the Rangers and Blue Jays organizations when the Brewers claimed him off waivers in 2003. He made 118 starts with Milwaukee over the next three-plus years, with an impressive 107 ERA+. A year later, the Brewers promoted Chris Capuano, a Grade B prospect who had been obtained in the Richie Sexson deal. Capuano gave the Brewers three-plus seasons of league-average pitching before his arm gave out. Yost also got two decent seasons as a starter out of Victor Santos, when no other team could get even one.

The only top starting prospect to reach the majors under Yost who didn’t pan out was Jorge de la Rosa, who only made 8 starts with Milwaukee before he was traded to the Royals for Tony Graffanino – and it took de la Rosa 3 more years and another organization before he finally started to fulfill his promise last season with the Rockies.

It’s true that the Brewers under Yost didn’t develop very many starting pitchers. But 1) that’s a reflection of the farm system more than the manager, and 2) Yost had enough success with recycled pitchers from other teams to win anyway.

The Case Against Ned

If there’s one complaint that both Yost’s critics and defenders agree upon, it’s that he did a terrible job of running a bullpen. He was very by-the-numbers with his relievers, assigning specific roles to his pitchers and then not deviating from those roles even when the need called for it. In particular, he used his closers seemingly to generate saves more than to win games.

In his first season, his closer went 2 innings for a save twice; Mike DeJean did it on July 29th, and Danny Kolb did it on July 19th. But as you can see, the Brewers were sort of transitioning between closers at the time, so neither one of them was the undisputed #1 guy at the time. In the five years after that, not once did Yost allow his closer to pitch 2 full innings for a save, and only nine times did his closer get a save of more than 3 outs.

His inability to work matchups is most brilliantly – and painfully – illustrated in Joe Sheehan’s column here. In the midst of the Brewers’ September collapse that got Yost fired, in the middle of being swept by the Phillies, the Brewers found themselves in a 3-3 tie in the 8th inning. Jayson Werth led off with a single, and Yost replaced Guillermo Mota with lefty specialist Brian Shouse to face Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. Utley sacrificed Werth to second…whereupon Yost ordered Shouse to intentionally walk Ryan Howard. To face Pat Burrell. And left Shouse in.

Royals fans fondly remember the time John Gibbons, then the manager of the Blue Jays, intentionally walked Tony Pena Jr. There really is nothing more to say, except that once Gibbons was hired as the Royals’ bench coach, fans were immediately worried that he would one day take over as manager when Trey Hillman was fired.

Yost’s decision to intentionally walk Ryan Howard, who has one of the most pronounced platoon splits in baseball, in order to pitch to Pat Burrell, who crushes lefties, WITH A LEFTY SPECIALIST ON THE MOUND, is orders of magnitude dumber than walking Pena to set up a double play. This was in September, in a pennant race, in the 8th inning of a tie game. Burrell hit a tie-breaking single, Shane Victoring hit a game-breaking single, the Brewers were swept in a doubleheader, and Yost was fired the next day.

The Case For Ned

One decision – admittedly, one horrible, indefensible decision – should not undo all the good work that Yost did in six years as the Brewers’ manager. Besides, at least in one regard Yost was a revolutionary thinker when it came to his bullpen. I am speaking of The Brooks Kieschnick Experiment, which Yost presided over.

Kieschnick, a star two-way player in college who had stuck to hitting – with meager success – as a pro, took up pitching again as a way to help his team on both sides of the game. Kieschnick actually resumed his pitching career with the White Sox in 2002, at the age of 30, but then joined the Brewers organization in 2003, Yost’s first season. He quickly earned the 25th spot on the roster, and over two seasons, he performed with admirable mediocrity as both a pitcher and a hitter. In 96 innings, he posted a 4.59 ERA; in 133 at-bats, he hit .286/.340/.496. In 2003, he played the outfield 3 times and DH’ed 4 more times, but in 2004 he didn’t play the field at all. But he was used as a pinch-hitter 71 times over those two seasons.

He was released the following spring, and never appeared in the majors again. But for two seasons, Kieschnick was the most perfect 25th roster man I’ve ever seen. The man who gave him that opportunity was Ned Yost.

The Case Against Ned

He was aloof and standoffish with the media in his time with Milwaukee, and his reaction to the Brewers’ second-half fades in 2007 and 2008 were so hyperanimated that within the clubhouse he earned the moniker “Nervous Ned”.

The Case For Ned

It’s possible – perhaps even probable – that Yost learned from his mistakes in Milwaukee. Many years ago, in his Guide to Baseball Managers, Bill James studied the performance record of managers based on whether it was their first job as a manager, second, third, etc. If I recall correctly, what James found was that there was a small but real trend towards managers doing their best in their second and third jobs. This makes sense – a first-time manager has a lot to learn, while a fourth-time manager is either old enough that he’s starting to slip, or was never that good in the first place, otherwise he wouldn’t have been fired three times.

This is Yost’s second job as a manager. He’s only 55. If he continues the good things he did in Milwaukee, and shows a willingness to learn from the mistakes that he made, he could be very successful in Kansas City.

The Case Against Ned

Since he was hired by the Royals, he has already made it clear that the one truly bold idea that Hillman had – to use Joakim Soria for more than three outs – is going to be put back on the shelf.

“I don’t think I would hesitate to use Soria in a four-out situation,” Yost said, “but I don’t generally like to do it. I think a closer is at his best when he comes in, gets his work done and goes into the locker room. I don’t like to see a closer come in, have to get an out, go sit down and then have to go back out and get three more outs.”

And later: “I like my closers to get every save that they can get.” Like I said: save-generating machines.

The Case For Ned

Whereas his predecessor had fallen so deeply under the spell of Little Ball that he was sacrifice bunting in the first inning, Yost seems to have a more enlightened view. In his first game, the Royals were mounting a rally with two singles to start the seventh inning, bringing Jose Guillen to the plate.

“We had first and second with nobody out and I thought about bunting for about half a second and I thought, ‘You know we’ve been struggling to score runs, let’s try to put a big one on the board,’ ” Yost said. “And we did.”

And later:

“I don’t like to play for one run,” he said, “unless it means we’re going to win the game. So early in the game, very seldom will you see me playing for one run.

“It doesn’t mean we’re going to bomb home runs to win ballgames, (but) we can drive the gaps and hit little bloop singles and put a big number on the board.”

The Case Against Ned

Yost managed Jason Kendall in 2008, when Kendall started a ridiculous 149 games behind the plate – no catcher has started more games in a season since Gary Carter in 1982.

Judging from his comments that Brayan Pena might get a start “every two weeks or so”, we’re in for more of the same.

The Case For Ned

He didn’t even wait 24 hours before he fired Dave Owen as his third-base coach. Some managers might have decided to evaluate things with their own eyes before making any big moves. Yost, this one time, understood that this was not the time for patience.

The Case Against Ned

On Tuesday, after Blake Wood had coughed up a win for Zack Greinke as he is contractually obligated to do, the Royals went into extra innings. In the bottom of the tenth, in a tie game, rather than reach for Soria to pitch an inning in the hopes of getting the game into the 11th, or any of the other options in his bullpen that were not making their season debut, Yost called on Brian Bullington.

Brian Bullington had just been called up from the minors. Bullington had all of 39 major league innings (and a 5.08 ERA) to his ledger. A single, a walk, a missed-first-base-error, and a drive over a drawn-in outfield later, the game was over.

The Case For Ned

In Gil Meche’s first start with Yost, Meche had thrown exactly 100 pitches after six innings. Coming back to the dugout, Meche held up one finger to his manager across the dugout, asking for one more inning. Yost simply shook his head, and that was that. The days of Meche actually being able to convince his manager to stay in the game even when it’s counterproductive seem to be over.

The Case Against Ned

Yesterday, Meche had grinded through 109 pitches in just 5 innings, yet Yost inexplicably let him start the sixth with a one-run lead. Two batters and two baserunners later, Meche was out having thrown 122 pitches, and the Indians were able to tie the game.

The Case For Ned

Yost’s comments after Ka’aihue was sent down were probably the biggest vote of confidence I’ve ever seen from the Royals regarding Kila.

“It just kills me to see Kila sitting on the bench and not playing,” said Yost, who replaced Trey Hillman as Royals manager following Thursday’s win against Cleveland. “I think he’s a huge part of our future, and for me I’d much rather have him down there right now, getting his at-bats, playing first base and if something happened he could come back here.”

“(Kila) is getting close to not having to go through this anymore, you know the up-and-down swing where you (get called) up and you (get sent) down,” Yost said. “He’s getting real close to becoming a major-league fixture.”

From an organization that went out of its way to pretend that Ka’aihue didn’t even exist last season, this is a welcome sign.

The Case Against Ned

He let Kila Ka’aihue get sent down. Words are good; actions are better.

The Case For Ned

He seems to understand, in a way that his general manager sometimes doesn’t, that the Royals aren’t really playing for 2010, and that sometimes you have to make decisions which may cause short-term pain for long-term gain. In Luke Hochevar’s first outing under Yost, he blew a 4-1 lead in the seventh inning, and Yost left him out there even as Hochevar gave up five hits and a walk to the first seven batters. Hochevar’s pitch count wasn’t high, but the Royals lost the game by a run, and a quicker hook might well have saved the game. Afterwards, Yost said:

“I told him, `Look, in those types of situations,’” Yost said, “`I’m going to let you pitch yourself out of trouble. You need to learn how. When you get yourself into those situations when you’re rolling, you need to learn how to get yourself out of those situations.’”

A pitcher like Hochevar, who has been underperforming to his talents for years now, needs some tough love, but he also needs the confidence of his manager. With one quote, Yost gave him both.

(If I ever stop writing this blog, it might be because the Royals finally suck away my will to go on. Or, it might be because of columns like this from Joe Posnanski. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. In one column, Poz sums up everything I’ve spent the better part of 15 years trying to get teams like the Royals to do.)

Conclusion

I tried to present the case for and against Ned as impartially as possible. But in the end, I have to say: the case for Ned Yost is a lot stronger than I thought, and the case against him isn’t.

The biggest problem I had with his hiring was that it was so predictable. I don’t mean predictable in the sense that he was hired as an adviser to the GM this off-season, and that as a former major-league manager he would make a perfect interim manager choice if and when Hillman was fired. I mean predictable in that some Royals fans successfully predicted that Yost would be our next manager the day he was fired by the Brewers, almost two years ago.

Yost, of course, was a coach for the Braves for over a decade before he was hired by the Brewers, and we know how much Dayton like his ex-Braves. So in that sense, the hiring was disappointing, because it seems to me that Yost was hired not for what he’s done, but simply for who he’s worked for in the past.

But maybe it’s both, because the deeper I looked into Yost’s time with the Brewers, the more I was impressed. His .477 winning percentage with the Brewers isn’t anything to write home about, until you remember that in the decade before he was hired, they had a .444 winning percentage. He took a team that had just lost 106 games to .500 in three years, and to the brink of the playoffs three years after that. The man who ultimately replaced him, Ken Macha, is already on the hot seat barely more than a season into his tenure.

As fans we focus so much on a manager’s tactical moves, simply because those are the decisions he makes that are most accessible to us. But there are thousands of smaller decisions that are made on a daily basis – do I give a pep talk to this struggling young player here, do I show confidence in this young pitcher by letting him work through this jam, how do I light a fire under this young player who’s not getting the most out of his talents. And we’re simply not privy to these conversations. All we can see are the results, which play out not in a game, or in a week or a month or even a season, but over multiple seasons.

Yost’s tactical mistakes are easy to see. His strategic victories are not. But it’s those victories – the ability to develop Fielder and Braun and Hardy and Weeks and Hart and Hall into quality ballplayers with relatively few bumps along the road – that made Yost’s tenure in Milwaukee the most successful of any manager since arguably Harvey Kuenn.

And that, in the end, is why he’s been hired by the Royals. Not because of his adeptness with his bullpen, but because the Royals can still salvage Alex Gordon and Ka’aihue, and Mike Moustakas is almost ready, and Derrick Robinson and Eric Hosmer and Johnny Giavotella are on their way. And while Yost wasn’t nearly as successful with his starting pitchers, that really seems to be more a reflection of the talent he had to work with. What works for young hitters may work for young pitchers as well, in which case Yost is the right man to bring along Mike Montgomery and Aaron Crow and John Lamb and half a dozen other promising arms.

I found this remarkably prescient piece written by a Brewers fan immediately after Yost was fired. Money quote: "I do think Yost deserves another chance at manager. He has many positive qualities as a patient developer of talent and preserver of starting arms. A team like Kansas City with an established closer and a lot of young talent that needs patience and structure could do a lot worse than hiring Yost if they get tired of Trey Hillman. Moving over to the AL would probably cover up a lot of his tactical and bench construction weaknesses as well. That's the type of situation where Yost is likely to maximize his value to a franchise at present."

Yost still needs to work to eliminate the “interim” label off his title, but at this point I think the job is his to lose, not his to win. We can only hope that along the way he learns to manage his bullpen a little better. I whined on Twitter after Yost brought in Bullington to pitch the tenth the other day. Joe Sheehan replied, “Just wait for 2013, when Yost is doing that with a potential postseason team.”

Well you know what? If the Royals are a potential postseason team under Yost in 2013, he’ll be the first manager since Dick Howser who could make that claim. I certainly hope that one day I’m not writing 5000-word screeds about how Yost’s bullpen shenanigans cost the Royals a game with a playoff spot on the line. But it sure beats the alternative. I know – I’ve been living the alternative for the last 25 years.

xxx

Joe Sheehan has been my colleague at Baseball Prospectus since we started in 1996, and my friend since 1993. Watching as the words that were sent to me by email in the early 90s became sharper, and more incisive, and just plain better over the years until he had become one of the very best baseball writers on the planet, is one of the great fringe benefits of my writing career.

Joe left Baseball Prospectus this winter to strike out on his own. While his work appears in a variety of places, from SI.com to Rotowire, he hasn't had a forum to write the long, unfiltered columns that he became famous for at BP. Now, though, he's announced his new project here. It's no exaggeration for me to say that after Bill James, I've learned more about baseball, and more about baseball writing, from Joe Sheehan than from anyone else.

So if you can spare the $20, I can't recommend his newsletter highly enough.

Hillman's Post-Mortem.

Wow.

When I wrote my last article, I had no expectation that Trey Hillman would actually be fired before my next post. Feel free to insert your own joke about the frequency of my postings if you want, but this move happened faster than even the most optimistic Royals fan could have expected.

In retrospect, it’s pretty clear that the straw that broke Hillman’s back came on Sunday, just hours after my last article posted, when Josh Hamilton failed to tag up from first base on a routine fly ball…and the entire team missed it. No one on the team was even aware that they missed a chance to call Hamilton out on appeal until after the game was over. Instead, the Rangers scored two more runs in the inning. They won the game by two runs. You do the math – I have no doubt that David Glass did.

It’s easy to say that the decision to fire Hillman came from ownership. It’s easy because it’s probably accurate. Sam Mellinger writes that much to his own surprise, this decision came entirely from Dayton Moore. I have no doubt that Mellinger’s intel is solid, but I think that the mechanics of a move this big are too complicated to be a simple either-or proposition. The ultimate decision rested in Moore’s hands, but the idea that Moore made the decision to fire Hillman entirely on his own – barely 48 hours after he said “He’s exactly what our organization needs at this point in time” – is frankly far more worrisome than the idea that ownership imposed this decision on him.

It’s no secret that Moore was close with Hillman on a personal as well as a professional level, and if there was any doubt, Moore removed them when he broke down briefly at the start of his press conference. As he said, this was the most difficult decision he has made in his career. Credit to him for making it, then, but credit also to ownership for forcing some accountability here.

As a rule, meddling from ownership is never a good thing. But if there’s an exception, this would be it. It’s not clear if Moore was going to let his personal relationship with Hillman cloud his judgment, but if David Glass stepped in and helped make the decision for him, he not only saved Moore from himself, he might have saved Hillman from having his reputation further damaged.

I speak from experience: eight years ago this month, the general manager of the Royals finally fired his long-time manager, a manager that he had grown so fond of that he could not bring himself to let him go until well after it was clear that a change needed to be made. The general manager was Allard Baird, and his manager was Tony Muser. In 2001, Muser’s fourth full season as manager, the Royals lost 97 games, tying a team record for losses set…under Muser’s watch two years earlier. Rob and I were calling for Muser’s head all season, and we weren’t the only ones. Instead, Baird’s big move that season was to trade Jermaine Dye for Neifi Perez.

Muser came back in 2002 as a dead man walking, even if he and his GM didn’t realize it. The Royals started 8-15, and late in the night on May 1st in Detroit, Muser learned he was fired – from a member of the media, as the news leaked before Baird could tell him himself. Baird let his friend down that night, but really, he let his friend down much more by not cutting the cord with him a year earlier, when Muser’s reputation might have been salvageable. Afterwards, I wrote this piece for Baseball Prospectus. Eight years later, Muser has yet to get a second chance as a manager in the major leagues.

Muser’s successor, Tony Pena, resigned in the middle of the night in Toronto, choosing to abandon his ballclub rather than come back to Kansas City and possibly testify in a divorce case in which he had been implicated. Pena’s successor, Buddy Bell, announced he would be “retiring” at the end of the 2007 season, ostensibly to take a position with the Royals that would require less travel. Approximately 18 minutes after the season, Bell announced that he was 1) hired by the White Sox 2) as their Director of Minor League Instruction, a position which requires a tremendous amount of travel. It wasn’t hard to read between the lines.

By the standards of recent Royals history, then, the timeline for the firing of Hillman was nice and clean. In his third full season, the Royals were not only not getting better, they were getting worse. That’s a pretty good rule-of-thumb to fire a manager with no previous record of success. Maybe it’s a brutal standard to uphold, but it’s a fair one.

In the aftermath of his firing, there’s a rather spirited debate going on about what Hillman did wrong. Joe Posnanski makes the case here that Hillman lost the respect of the players early, and never gained it back. I think he has a very valid point; this isn’t the first time someone has compared Hillman to Vern Rapp, and after the Hillman experience, I think it should be a hard-and-fast rule in baseball: NEVER hire a manager who hasn’t spent time IN SOME CAPACITY with a major league baseball team. I don’t care if he’s managed, played, coached, served as a trainer, batboy, whatever. The culture of a major league clubhouse is unique, and no amount of managing in the minors or in Japan can substitute for it.

But ultimately I don’t think that Hillman’s time in Kansas City would have been much longer or more successful even if he had spent a year coaching in the majors first. To Hillman’s credit, he seemed to correct a lot of the mistakes he made in his first season, when he almost lost the clubhouse in September. The price of fixing those mistakes may have been substantial; I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Jose Guillen has played almost every day this season, even as his production has cratered, or that Gil Meche seemed to have final say over when he came out of the ballgame. But I think that Hillman’s biggest mistake with the Royals is far more fundamental. I think his mistake was in accepting the job in the first place.

No matter how impressive a manager might be when it comes to things that don’t show up in the standings, he’s going to lose his job if the things that do show up in the standings – wins and losses – don’t show progress after 2 or 3 seasons. And given the overall state of the Royals’ organization after the 2007 season, when Hillman was hired, he was facing an uphill battle to keep his job from day one.

He inherited a team that had lost 93 games, that had started Ross Gload at first base, and for whom Odalis Perez was the #3 starter. More than that, he inherited a team that after the season was ranked by Baseball America as having the #24 farm system in baseball. A small-market team with no talent on the field or in the minor leagues: this was close to mission impossible. The job wasn’t made any easier by his general manager’s decision to focus on high school talent in his first two drafts. I’m not faulting Moore for that decision at all; it may in fact prove to be the right move in the long run. But Hillman didn’t have a long run. He had to know that his GM wasn’t doing him any favors by drafting guys who wouldn’t be ready to help the team until well into the future – a future that Hillman might not have.

Or to put it another way, as recently as this spring training many Royals fans – myself included – lamented the Royals’ decision to draft Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer over Matt Wieters and Gordon Beckham. It’s now a lot less clear whether the Royals made the wrong decision. But having Wieters and Beckham might have made Hillman a more successful manager in 2010, even if they didn’t make him a better manager. Ultimately a manager is only as good as his players, and the Royals still don’t have the horses.

I think I made this case to a friend back when Hillman was hired: I’d hate to be Hillman, but I’d love to be the guy who replaces Hillman. By 2010 or 2011, my thinking went, the organization ought to have a lot more talent in place, making it possible for the Royals to be a contender by 2012 or 2013. Hillman just chose the wrong window of time to be the manager for the Kansas City Royals. He’s now paying the price for it.

That’s not to absolve him of his failings or to argue that his firing was unjustified. He earned this decision. But it’s only fair to point out that he was dealt a losing hand from day one.

The most important consequence of this move is that it places the progress of the team squarely on the shoulders of Moore, as they should be. Losing franchises have a natural sort of progression. After a team underachieves for long enough, the general manager fires the manager; if the underachievement continues for a few more years, then the owner fires the general manager. The new general manager then gets to fire the manager he inherits at a time of his choosing, and then the cycle repeats itself.

The Royals just finished the first stage. Moore inherited Buddy Bell, and was not beholden to him at all, so letting Bell go after the 2007 season was a free move. But Hillman was his guy, and by nudging Moore to fire him, Glass also sends a very strong message that the next time the pressure builds to axe someone in the front office, it probably won’t be the manager who gets scapegoated.

This is a good thing, and I say that even though I am not one of the chorus of Royals fans calling for Moore to get fired right now. While Moore has made some egregious errors in constructing this roster, it simply can not be stressed enough: the reason why the Royals suck year after year isn’t because they sign guys like Kyle Farnsworth and trade for guys like Yuniesky Betancourt. The reason the Royals are on schedule for their 15th losing record in the last 16 years is because they have done a terrible job of scouting and developing talent for a long, long time.

It’s too early to say whether Moore has fixed that fundamental weakness. But it’s not too early to say that the early results are promising. I hope to get to the minor leagues soon – I intended to spend today writing about them before Hillman was fired – but even casual Royals fans have heard about the exploits of Moustakas, Hosmer, Michael Montgomery et al. this season.

Hillman leaves behind a team that is not only not good, it’s not young. Incredibly, Billy Butler was the only player on the entire roster who was under the age of 26. That’s not a reflection on Hillman, but on the man who handed him this team. The good news is that while the success of the team may not change quickly, the complexion of the team just might. Mike Aviles isn’t young, but he represented an immediate upgrade to the lineup; pretty soon we may say the same about Kila Ka’aihue. Blake Wood, called up the other day, is 24. By this time next year, no less than three lineup spots and two spots in the rotation – and, if we’re lucky, the better part of the entire bullpen – might be turned over to young talent.

At that point or soon thereafter, it will be fair to judge Dayton Moore. If those players live up to their hype, then whoever succeeds Hillman as manager next year – whether it’s Ned Yost or (hopefully) someone else – will get the credit. And if they don’t, Moore will take the blame, and Royals fans will get their scalp.

---

I hope to be back soon with a full analysis of Ned Yost. In the meantime, from the self-promotion department:

- For those of you who would like to listen to the radio show after the fact (and the timing of Hillman’s firing couldn’t have been better, as we went on the air less than 2 hours later), click here to download the podcast. Scroll down to “Additional Programming”.

- My original hometown paper, the Wichita Eagle, ran a profile of me in Sunday’s edition here.

- Going further back, prior to the season I did my patriotic duty as an American by agreeing to be interviewed by America.gov here. Pay no mind to my prediction that the Atlanta Braves would win the World Series - that quote clearly must have come from Dayton Moore.

Hillman's Last Stand.

I know I owe you some vaguely optimistic words about the callups of Mike Aviles and Kila Ka’aihue. But that will have to wait. There are times for childish fantasies like gingerbread houses and sugar plums and young Royals with upside, but this is not one of them. This is a time to have a very frank, sober, adult conversation.

Trey Hillman has crossed the point of no return in Kansas City.

Yesterday’s game was an exhibition of managerial malpractice almost unparalleled in the history of the franchise. Hillman could hardly have damaged the Royals’ chances to win the game more if he had tried. It is exceedingly important that every Royals fan understand the extent to which Hillman hurt both his team’s chances of winning last night, and his most well-paid pitcher’s chances of earning his generous contract for well into the future.

Some background is necessary to understand why Hillman was the talk of the baseball twittersphere last night.

Let’s start with the trivial stuff. Yuniesky Betancourt, as you probably know, cost the Royals (and Zack Greinke) a run on Friday night when he nonchalantly dropped a routine pop-up with a man on second and two outs. The photograph of his muff – I believe it was on the front cover of the Star’s sports page – should be the emblem of the Royals season. (It’s picture #11 in this montage.)

It has it all – terrible form (Yuni, as you may have heard, likes to catch pop-ups at chest level, with one hand), terrible vision (as the ball is bouncing off his glove, Yuni is staring up at the sky, possibly distracted by a passing robin, or maybe looking for the North Star), and a kind of nonchalant insouciance that suggests that catching pop-ups is beneath a man of Yuni’s talents.

It was a bad, unforgivably bad, play, and it cost Greinke yet another unearned run.

Afterwards, Hillman said that he would take “action” against Betancourt. The appropriate action should be quite obvious – bench him for the next game. Instead, Betancourt started, while Mike Aviles had his first day off in five games. But don’t worry – Betancourt was fined a few bucks, so Hillman’s point was made. Never mind that Betancourt is making $3 million this season, so a fine of, say, $1000 would be the equivalent of a $20 fine for someone who makes $60,000 a year. That’s not even a slap on the wrist; it’s more like punishing him with a tickle fight.

Naturally, Betancourt rewarded his manager’s confidence by going 0-4 last night, batting with a man on base all four times, and with a man in scoring position three times. And once again, he failed to drive home a runner on third with less than two out. In a game the Royals lost by one run.

While Hillman benched Aviles in favor of Betancourt, he did see fit to give Ka’aihue his first start of the season, moving Billy Butler to DH and giving Jose Guillen the day off. Ka’aihue didn’t have a good day, going 0-for-3, before Hillman pinch-hit for him with Guillen against a left-hander in the 7th. That, by itself, was a perfectly defensible move. But after Guillen made an out to keep the game tied, Hillman decided he had to keep Guillen in the game, setting off a ridiculous sequence of musical chairs.

Guillen stayed in at right field, forcing David DeJesus to left field, forcing Scott Podsednik to center field, forcing Mitch Maier to first base.

Maier had never played first base before in the majors. He had never played first base before in the minors. But Hillman decided that the late innings of a tie game was the perfect time for him to get his first opportunity, not to mention downgrading the defense significantly at two other positions. It didn’t cost the Royals in the end, but it was a curious decision. If Willie Bloomquist isn’t on the roster to keep the Royals from playing three players out of position, then why is he here?

These two moves were just the appetizers to the main course, a sequence of events so baffling that even now I keep hoping that the official scorer in Arlington was strung out on meth and that none of what I’m about to recount ever happened.

Starting for the Royals last night was the artist formerly known as Gil Meche, the artist who, after the Royals criminally allowed him to throw 121 pitches despite a self-acknowledged “dead arm” on July 1st of last year, had allowed 53 earned runs in 54 innings. The same Gil Meche who missed time in spring training with tightness in his shoulder. The same Meche who, coming into the game, had a 9.89 ERA this season and had allowed more walks (18) than strikeouts (14).

The Royals have been in denial that something’s still wrong with Meche all season. After his last start, we get this: “He was almost over the hump,” Hillman said. “If the breaking ball (to Rios) with two strikes doesn’t get through the left side … it’s a lot better line for him.” Meche allowed 9 hits and 5 runs in 5 innings in that start; he walked 3 batters and he struck out 2. That performance can’t be explained away by a couple of groundballs with eyes.

Was Meche still hurting? “The only thing I can go on is what comes out of his mouth and the mannerisms you see when he’s pitching,” Hillman said. “Most of the time you see something different in the mannerisms. I haven't seen anything different.”

It is with this background in mind that Meche took the mound last night, and gutted his way through 7 strong innings. I say “gutted” because he wasn’t dominant, or even in control, by any stretch of the imagination. He walked 5 batters and struck out only 3. In the sixth inning, Vladimir Guerrero led off with a single, but was then thrown out by Maier when he tried to advance to third on Ian Kinsler’s single, allowing Meche to get out of the inning unscathed.

But still, through 7 innings and 104 pitches, Meche allowed just 2 runs in 7 innings. The bullpen was fairly rested, thanks to Greinke – only Kyle Farnsworth had thrown the day before, and just one inning. Furthermore, the team has a day off on Monday. With the top of the Rangers’ lineup due up, there was no reason to push Meche any further – get a fresh arm in there.

Hillman sent Meche to the mound to start the bottom of the eighth. Meche promptly walked Elvis Andrus on five pitches. The heart of the Rangers’ order – Michael Young, Josh Hamilton, Guerrero and Kinsler – was due up. Alarm bells were going off on the mound.

The Rangers regifted the baserunner back to the Royals, as Andrus was thrown out trying to steal with Young at the plate. Meche returns the favor again, walking Young on six pitches. He’s now thrown 115 pitches, and walked the last two batters he’s faced. The alarm bells were now accompanied by red and blue flashing strobe lights. There’s a meeting on the mound. "He just came out and asked how I felt," Meche said. "Basically I said, 'I've been in here this long, let me battle my way out of this.' He just said basically, 'Let's go. The ball four is killing us.'" Hillman leaves Meche in.

Hamilton beats out an infield single on Meche’s second pitch. Meche has now thrown 117 pitches. The last three batters he’s faced have reached base safely. The go-ahead run is on second base with one out. A speaker pops out of the pitching rubber and a muffled voice states, “Please pull over into the visitor’s dugout.”

Meche stays in to pitch to future Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero. On the third pitch, Guerrero nails a ball to deep center field, which Podsednik runs down as Young cruises into third base. 120 pitches.

Meche pitches to Kinsler. Kinsler works the count to 2-2, fouls off a pair of two-strike pitches, and Meche hangs a curveball. Kinsler bangs it to right field to plate the go-ahead run. 127 pitches.

At this point, sure, why the hell not leave Meche in? We’ve already reached the point of absurdity – what’s one more batter going to do? David Murphy mercifully flies out on the first pitch. Neftali Feliz and his 100 mph fastball come in to pitch the 9th, and despite a pinch single from Aviles, Feliz puts the game away.

So to recap: Gil Meche, who started complaining of a tired arm after throwing 132 pitches in a complete game last June, and who has been consistently awful since throwing 121 pitches with a dead arm last July, and who wasn’t pitching well so much as pitching lucky on this night, was allowed to throw 128 pitches – the longest outing by any major league pitcher this season – on Saturday night. He was left in to complete the 8th inning, despite a fresh bullpen, and despite the fact that he allowed the first three batters to reach base safely.

Oh, yeah - and as a result, Meche surrenders the game-winning run.

Does anyone remember what happened in that game on July 1st? Because Hillman clearly doesn’t. Meche started the 6th inning that day, in a game tied 2-2, having thrown 99 pitches. He allowed the leadoff hitter to reach base. With two outs, he then allowed a walk, putting men on first and second with two outs. Hillman left him in to pitch – TO JOE MAUER – and Mauer hit the go-ahead single. Meche has never been the same since.

Last night, facing a virtually identical situation, Hillman made the exact same decisions. It’s as if the game of July 1st never happened. It’s as if I and Joe Posnanski and a hundred other bloggers – Royals fans and non-Royals fans – hadn’t immediately declared Hillman’s decision to be one of the dumbest moves of the season. It’s as if we weren’t immediately proven correct when Meche’s season went into the tank. It’s as if Meche didn’t miss the entire month of September. It’s as if those who do not learn from history are not actually doomed to repeat it.

But they are. Ten months ago, Trey Hillman made perhaps the worst decision of his managerial career, and ruined – perhaps irrevocably – his second-best starting pitcher. Yesterday, faced with the same choice, he made the exact same decision. There can be no stronger evidence that Hillman hasn’t learned a thing on the job.

The old me would now proceed with a few thousand words filled with choice insults and all but demanding that when the Royals return home today, that Hillman be left behind in Arlington along with his retired number. The new me is trying to be a little less emotional and a little more analytical. So I’m not going to insist that the Royals fire Hillman on the spot.

I’m not going to argue that Hillman should be fired. I’m just going to predict that he will be. Probably soon.

It doesn’t take an archaeologist to read the writing on the wall of this cave. Hillman’s contract expires at the end of the season; he was conspicuously not given a contract extension over the winter, cementing his lame-duck status. The Royals are 11-20 and fading fast. As Royals fans we’ve become inured to losing, but it’s worth pointing out that the Indians, who inspired this classic media meltdown the other day, actually have a better record than the Royals.

And trust me: David Glass is getting pissed. Most fans still have this image of Glass as this soulless, bean-counting owner who cares about the accounting ledgers more than the standings. But I stand by what I’ve written since Dayton Moore was hired: David Glass has been a model owner for the last four years. He hired the man who was considered the #1 GM prospect in the game by Baseball America, he’s let Moore run the team without interference, and he has opened his wallet when Moore asked him to.

The team’s payroll may still be low, but it’s no longer among the lowest in the game, and the Royals have spent more money in the draft over the last two years than any team but the Pirates. And part of the reason the payroll is so low is that the Royals simply didn’t have any players worth spending millions of dollars on. Since Moore took over, the Royals haven’t lost a single player to free agency that they wanted to keep. Instead, they’ve signed a pair high-profile free agents from other teams (Meche and Guillen), and several more mid-range free agents like Kyle Farnsworth, Juan Cruz, Willie Bloomquist, and Horacio Ramirez.

The money spent on those players has almost uniformly been wasted – but that’s just it. It’s Moore’s fault for spending the money – not Glass’s fault for not spending the money.

And I have it on good authority that Glass is getting pissed off. It wouldn’t surprise me if the decision to release Juan Cruz outright was a reflection of that (although it might also have something to do with the fact that Cruz, in addition to pitching terribly, was a gigantic pain in the ass.) But Glass is starting to realize that his front office isn’t wearing any clothes, and I expect that pretty soon Moore will have to make a more substantial sacrificial offering.

Since the Royals’ magical, mystical 18-11 start last season, they have now played 164 games – a full season plus two more games. They’re 58-106 in that span. That’s astonishing. In 2005, the year before Moore was hired, the Royals reached the absolute nadir of their existence by going 56-106. Five years later, despite a payroll more than 50% higher, despite millions being invested in the farm system, the Royals are exactly as bad now as they were then.

And they show no signs of getting better. On the contrary, as Posnanski wrote on Friday, they show all the signs of a team about to fall into the abyss. He wrote that the day before Hillman launched his second sneak attack on Gil Meche’s shoulder.

I didn’t expect much from the Royals this season, and I suspect most of you didn’t either, but so far the Royals are failing to meet even my meager expectations. It’s been clear for a long time that Hillman wasn’t part of the solution, but now we have overwhelming evidence that he’s a part of the problem.

The Royals have 21 games left in May as I write this. If they play under .500 in that span – say, 9-12 or worse – they’ll be 20-32 or worse after Memorial Day, and the Hillman Watch will begin in earnest. I put the odds that he gets cashiered before Flag Day at about 30%; the odds that he’s gone by the trading deadline have to be around 70%. And the odds that he returns next year? Jose Guillen has a better chance of coming back.

Sayonara, Trey. I had high hopes for you when you were hired, so believe me when I say I’m sorry it didn’t work out. But they didn’t. It’s in the best interests of everyone for you to move on.

Especially Gil Meche.