Moore Stars

In 1990, Bret Saberhagen was the sole Kansas City Royal to earn that requisite team all-star spot. It was the beginning of a twenty-two year drought that would see only twenty-four Royals featured in all-star games. You know things are bad when you reflect back on 2003 and remember Mike Sweeney and Mike MacDougal as the glory days. Juntos Podemos...

My how the times have changed! In 2015, the Royals sent seven all-stars to Cincinnati for the game - five of whom were voted in by the fans (Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain, Salvador Perez, *Alex Gordon, and Mike Moustakas), one of whom was voted in by the players (Wade Davis - who finally gave up his second earned run of the season because Alex Rios needed to man the less than god-like defensive outfield position), and one of whom was taken by manager Ned Yost (Kelvin Herrera). 2003 is now a punch-line - a page-break in the annals of Royals history during a time that Kansas City would sooner forget than bring up. The glory days are here and now.

And though the number of all-stars is not exactly the litmus test for the strength of a team, that's not quite the point. Five Royals were voted into this year's All-Star game by the fans. Not the Yankees of New York, not the Red Sox of Boston, not the Angels of Los Angeles. It was Kansas City that rocked the vote. This is a small-market team's fan base that just kicked every other team's fan base in the nads en route to voting in four Royals to start the All-Star Game...and then gouged some eyes for good measure in order to get Moustakas in as well. This Royals team is tenacious, and the fans are adopting that scratch-and-claw mentality in their own way. If you can't swing a bat, you can sure as hell click a mouse.

The point is that we have fallen in love with this team, and we're prepared to fight for them the way they fight for Kansas City. For a while, eight Royals were leading the all-star vote. It was a team potentially comprised of Mike Trout and Royals...good odds for the AL! This, however, was not cute to the rest of the nation's baseball fans, who saw the surge in Kansas City votes as an affront to the integrity of what the All-Star Game stands for. Renowned baseball writer Jason Stark, while talking with Kansas City pundit Soren Petro over the radio airwaves, posed the question, "Do you know how the rest of the country is feeling about all of this??" I love Jason Stark, but do you know how little we give a shit about the rest of the country's feelings?? What's the phrase I'm looking for? Oh yeah: there's no crying in baseball! Either campaign for someone else, or shut the hell up. We don't want to hear complaining from cities and fans who had every opportunity...hell, more the opportunity than Kansas City did to vote in the players they wanted to see in the game.

But this particular blog post is dedicated to the past, not the present. What can I say? I'm a history major dropout; I love having context of a situation in understanding how the present has come to be. Someone or some thing deserves credit for what has happened in Kansas City. And though I can find myself praying to the Almighty concerning potential outcomes in sports, I don't think He actually cares. Either that or San Francisco prayed more fervently than I. So I want to take the time to honor the executive prowess of the man largely responsible for assembling this team - Royals' general manager and architect Dayton Moore. Namely, I want to highlight two of the best trades that have ever been made in this franchise's history - trades that have unquestionably contributed to the team's composition as the best in the American League and its complexion as the funnest and most tightly-knit in all of baseball.

Dayton Moore took over as general manager for the Royals in June of 2006. Although personally, it represented a triumphant return home for the lifelong Wichita-born Royals fan, let's face it, it was professional suicide. The Royals had become the laughing stock of major league baseball. Even the name "Royals" was synonymous with "pathetic". People in no way wanted to be royal. Four of the previous five seasons had seen 100+ losses. And although you'd think that with so many top draft spots following such atrociousness that the farm system would be stockpiled with talent, such was not the case. In a seven-year stretch between 1997 to 2003, the Royals had seven top-ten draft picks. They took: Dan Reichert, Jeff Austin, Kyle Snyder, Mike Stodolka, Colt Griffin, Zack Greinke, and Chris Lubanski. If you even remotely follow baseball then you know that one of these names is not like the other. Six of those players together amounted essentially to jack squat. But there was Zack Greinke. Thank God for Zack Greinke. Zack Greinke who would eventually go on to win the American League Cy Young award in 2009 with Kansas City. Zack Greinke who would become one of the best pitchers in baseball. Zack Greinke who would unwittingly save Kansas City's franchise...

Now I love Zack Greinke. I loved him when he was a Royal, and I still love him as the starter of the National League All-Star team for the Dodgers. I love his sick arsenal of pitches. I love his cerebral approach to pitching. I love that he returned to baseball and became a perennial Cy-Young contender after having departed for a while to get his mind right. I love that he stood his ground on the mound when Carlos Quentin charged him and dislocated his shoulder. I love that he's one of the most awkward and least interesting interviews in sports. I love that his parents spelled his name with a "k". Such sycophantic adoration is what inherently comes with cheering for your team's best players. They can do no wrong. George Brett could've punched a nun in the face, and Kansas City would've shoved her out of the way to check if Brett's hand was alright.

It perhaps goes without saying then that when Dayton Moore traded Greinke to the Milwaukee Brewers in December of 2010, it was a dark day for me indeed. The previous Royals organization had a long history of trading away its best players in exchange for shitty ones. As a fan, you become conditioned to respond with cynicism after seeing players like Jermaine Dye, Johnny Damon, and Carlos Beltran traded for the likes of Neifi Perez, Brent Mayne, Mike Wood, John Buck, Conner Teahan, and...why am I confounding the situation with names? It was shit. Oakland and Houston could've instead mailed us several large bags of poop. They wouldn't have stunk as long, and they would've come with far cheaper price tags attached. So when I heard the names of the players Milwaukee was giving to us for Greinke - some shortstop named Alcides Escobar, some outfielder named Lorenzo Cain, and some pitcher named Jake Odorizzi, you must forgive me for expressing immediate derision in response to the move. I thought we had just traded away one of the best players in baseball for nothing yet again. I didn't know whether these players would even step foot into beautiful Kauffman Stadium or if they would simply languish with all the other misfit toys on the archipelago known as Kansas City's farm system.

As it turns out, they weren't marooned for long. 2011 ended up being a very significant season for the Royals. Though they would go on to lose ninety-one games, they saw a wave of youth called up to the team, including Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas - two of Dayton's high draft picks, Salvador Perez - part of a revamped Latin American recruiting effort by Moore's organization, and trade acquisitions Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain. I thought Dayton Moore was crazy when he traded Greinke away. He was; like a fox. I didn't have the foresight in 2010 to realize that what the Kansas City Royals didn't need at that time was to pay a phenomenal pitcher in his prime a boatload of money and cripple the rest of the team in the process. Their future wasn't Greinke. It was in the young players that would soon come up together, play together, become really good together, and eventually do special things together. That was the vision, at least...

Back to the Greinke trade...

They say that the middle of the field is the most important in terms of defense. This would be the shortstop, the second baseman, and the center fielder. If the fielders are elite, the three comprise a Bermuda triangle of sorts, where balls go to die. The more important of the three - probably the consensus two most valuable defensive positions on a baseball team - are the shortstop and center fielder. In December of 2010, Dayton Moore gave up Zack Greinke and received in return an elite defensive shortstop in Alcides Escobar and a future gold glove-winning center fielder (it hasn't happened yet, but it will) in Lorenzo Cain. Their wizardry on the field tends to obscure the truth that both of these players are also above-average hitters at their respective positions. Alcides Escobar is a career .266 leadoff hitter who steals bases and has a penchant for clutch RBI's. Lorenzo Cain is currently having the best season in his short career by far, hitting .320, already with 17 stolen bases, and 10 homeruns - more than he's ever hit in a season before. While Greinke bounced from Milwaukee to Anaheim to LA, seeking teams that could afford him, these two players have each played nearly five seasons each in Royal blue and presumably have several more in their future. They've played in the World Series and now have both started and recorded hits in the 2015 All-Star Game. Oh yeah, they're making a combined $5.75 million this season. The guy they were traded for makes $27. That wasn't just a good trade. It was a phenomenal trade.

But wait, there's Moore!

There was another guy in that trade (technically there were two, but nobody really cares about relief pitcher Jeremy Jeffress, and quite frankly, he doesn't support my argument). Ahem. Like I was saying, there was one other guy in that trade. His name is Jake Odorizzi. Though you can find better Italian names in baseball, you won't find too many better second pieces in a trade. Odorizzi has indeed become a fine major league starting pitcher. But you won't find him these days in a blue uniform. Odorizzi was part of a six-player deal that sent him and super prospect Wil Myers to Tampa Bay in exchange for frontline ace James Shields and starter/reliever Wade Davis.

The deal wasn't very popular in Kansas City. It was bold, and the writing was on the walls: either win in two years while you have James Shields, or you traded away a potential star for nothing. The general consensus was that if the Royals could simply make the playoffs and end their 27-year drought, the trade would have been worth it. That may sound like a very humble goal, but let me tell you, when you witness year after wretched year of your team not only missing the playoffs but missing it by a mile, the playoffs begin to feel about as accessible as Pluto.

In 2013, Wade Davis was abominable as a starter, the Royals failed to make the playoffs, and Wil Myers won Rookie of the Year with Tampa Bay. Ohhhhhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiit. One year with James Shields down, one year to go. In-depth trade analysis: not good.  Detailed prognostication: not good at all.

In spring training of 2014, the Royals' bullpen - a clear strength of the team - lost its quality setup man Luke Hochevar to Tommy John surgery. Awesome. So someone got the bright idea to take Wade Davis, who I will remind you was terrible the season before as a starter, and convert him into a reliever. Relieve he did, to the tune of a 1.00 ERA, 0.85 WHIP, and a gaudy 3.7 WAR. For the faint of stats, let me help: that is ridiculous. You can't really quantify the value of a pitcher who can shut down the eighth inning every single time...until it's compounded when you combine said pitcher with two others who can do the exact same thing. Ergo the law firm of Herrera, Davis, and Holland - the greatest bullpen in baseball history. If the Royals bring a tie or a lead into the seventh inning, the game is all but won.

Meanwhile, while Wade Davis was putting together one of the greatest campaigns for a reliever ever, James Shields was continuing to pitch extremely effectively. But his pitching wasn't the most valuable asset he brought to Kansas City; it was his charisma. After seven seasons pitching on a perennially good Tampa Bay team that went to the World Series in 2008, James Shields brought with him to Kansas City a winning attitude. He taught the team to loosen up and be themselves. He taught them that it's a long, 162-game season, and not to be discouraged by a 5-game losing streak. Everyone needs a mentor, professional athletes notwithstanding, and James Shields filled that role for a team comprised almost entirely of young players. So like a virus, Shields infected the clubhouse with his swagger. After 28 years of an ingrained losing culture, the Royals didn't need Zack Greinke's stoic excellence. They needed someone who would begin to change the culture, infusing a sense of belonging among the American League's elite. Sometimes you just need Mufasa to show you your kingdom.

So ultimately Zack Greinke was directly or indirectly involved in bringing Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Wade Davis, and James Shields to Kansas City. That's three all-stars and a winning culture. Without those players the Royals probably aren't a winning ball club, they don't make the playoffs in 2014, and they certainly don't become American League champions and take the World Series to seven games.

As a fan it's so easy to be critical, especially after three decades of ineptitude. It's taken Dayton Moore's organization the better part of a decade to break that train of thought, but I think it's finally sunk in that these guys know what they're doing. Big, bold moves like the Greinke and Shields trades certainly do a lot to earn that standing, but so do the little things, like trading for Jeremy Guthrie, signing Ervin Santana, Edinson Volquez, and Kendrys Morales, taking a chance on aging pitchers Ryan Madson and Chris Young, and oh yeah, there is that ridiculous 5-year, $7 million contract with three-time all-star Salvador Perez.

Who is the most valuable contributor to this Royals team? It could be the man behind the scenes, making things happen with his phone rather than a bat. What he's given us hasn't come in the form of clutch hitting, run production, or stranded runners. He's given us confidence and trust in this organization - both now and moving forward. You can't measure that, you can't quantify it on a stat sheet, and it sure as hell doesn't pack up and go to LA. We believe. It feels so good to say that and mean it.