Old Time Family Baseball

For those that love prospects and a good small market baseball team, John Sickels has an in-depth interview with Royals GM Dayton Moore up at Minor League Ball. While many, including myself, have been quick to jump on the “What is Dayton Moore doing?” train following the signings of players like Jose Guillen and Jeff Francouer, it’s not like he had a lot of great options with Kansas City’s payroll restrictions. At the same time, Moore has managed to give the Royals one of the deepest and most interesting farm systems that the game has ever seen—certainly helped by their poor finishes in the last half decade, but there are plenty of other teams out there that have squandered those high draft picks. 

As Moore tells it:

“When I got here, the farm system was almost empty, so we were starting from scratch. But even if you have a perfect draft, even if you are 100% right about a player, it can still take him three or four years to get to the majors, then another two to four years before he becomes a consistent performer. The 2007 through 2009 drafts have given us a really great farm system, and the early returns for 2010 look good too. But it takes time for that talent to flow to the majors. We want players to be reaching the majors in waves, two or three new guys per year, who have played together and know how to win together. And we are just starting to see the first results of that.
      When Terry Ryan took over the Twins in 1994, it took them six or seven years to get to the point where they were consistently competitive. It doesn’t happen overnight. But that is the model we have to follow to be competitive in Kansas City.”

There are plenty of other interesting tidbits including why hitters initially struggle upon promotions and where some of the lesser Royals prospects may fit in with the team’s future. Assuming that Moore doesn’t empty out the system for another crack at Yuniesky Betancourt, I would expect that you’re going to start seeing a lot more people claiming to be “lifelong Royals fans” in about two seasons.