I haven’t written about the team since the season ended, so here’s a quickfire recap if for some reason the only thing you read on the entire internet is an occasionally updated non-specific focused blog.

Mark Teahan was traded to the White Sox for Chris Getz and Josh Fields

Noel Arguelles was signed for $7 million over five years

Jason Kendall was signed for $6 million over two years

Miguel Olivio, John Buck, Coco Crisp, Josh Anderson, John Bale, Jamey Wright, Yasuhiko Yabuta, and Mike Jacobs were all cut, released, non-tendered and otherwise told to go work somewhere else

Using rough estimates of what everyone would have made or was due next year, these moves saved the team a combined sum of roughly $24 million vs an addition of $13 million.  And yes, we really would have owed that much to that many horrible players, although Crisp’s $8 million option year somewhat inflates the total.

The Royals had a lot of dead weight going into this offseason that simply did not belong on a major league roster.  Dayton Moore had acquired all of these guys, most of whom cost him in both dollars and players.  And after spending all his in season press conferences defending his choices, he quietly and effectively renounced every single one of them with a pink slip.

KC got dramatically better over the last week.  I can say with an absolutely clear concience that since the season ended the R’s have done more in improve than any other team in baseball.  The only way things could be better is if we’d also been able to ditch Jose Guillen and Yuni Betancourt.  The ability in any industry to ignore sunk costs is rare.  In the sports world, where egos and emotions generally run rampant, its even more rare.  Yet Dayton has consistently shown the ability, and willingness to actually do so, while publicly denying he ever made a mistake.  This hasn’t endeared him to the fans at all, but it has proven to be very beneficial for the team.

Since most of you are probably looking for examples, lets start with guys who, after they started being terrible, went away.  Angel Berroa was sent down to the minors despite a huge contract, Yabuta got zapped to Omaha so fast after he arrived with a $6 million deal that a lot of people never even realized he wasn’t a farmhand.  TPJ got turned into a pitcher (eventually), and Mike Jacobs, Joey Gathright, Josh Anderson and Coco Crisp didn’t make it through their first post bad playing offseason.  (Gathright was actually good his first year here when he accidentally posted an abnormally high .351 OBP).

Other players who got too expensive for thier abilities, just never quite panned out or who were high picks but had issues have also been sent packing - see Mark Teahan, John Buck, and Ambriox Burgious as examples of all three categories in order.

So the first great thing GMDM did this offseason was realize and assess his own errors, then correct as many of them as was possible.  This really is a lot harder to do than it sounds and speaks volumes about how great his long term prospects as GM really are.  Anybody can be good for a few years.  To be consistently good over a long period of time in an ever changing industry requires the ability to self analyze and self correct.  GMDM is showing that this offseason.

The second great thing GMDM has done this offseason is sign Jason Kendall.  I truly don’t understand why this move is so unpopular.  Retaining John Buck would have cost twice as much this year, and even more next year.  We would have had to retain Buck for two years because there are no good internal catching prospects who are going to be ready before 2012.  There also aren’t really any good young catchers coming up in the FA market (and no, you can’t count Joe Mauer because honestly, we’re not a player in that game).  So getting Kendall for two years was a good move.  But what’s that you say?  Kendall is cheap, but he can’t hit?  Who cares?  Your catcher is primarily a defensive player.  And guess what?  Using advanced defensive metrics (those things Dayton admitted to not understanding just a few months ago), Kendall ranks out as high as the second best in the league depending on which system you use (Dewan).

So basically, we got a guy who’s only real offensive skill is the most important one (OBP) and who plays phenomenal defense at the most demanding defensive position on the diamond, for dramatically less than what we spent last year on two guys who had low OBPs and led the league in passed balls and overall terrible catcher defensiveness.  In other words, we upgraded the position while cutting our expenditure on it in half.  Brilliant.

This move also makes the team a lot better because it makes Brayan Pena relevant since his skills complement rather than redundantize Kendall’s abilities, thus making Hillman’s job a lot easier.  Need runs?  Use Pena.  Need defense?  Use Kendall.  Managing a pro team is a stressful, complex job done under a bright spotlight.  Making decision making processes more straightforward is a very underrated way to make your team better and improve the performance of your coaching staff.

It is also impossible to stress just how much better this team is without John Bale/Yash Yabuta/Jamey Wright on the staff.  I can’t find the article now, but there was a piece in one of the New York dailies shortly after the season ended that listed the best and worst relief pitchers this year.  In EVERY SINGLE WORST CATEGORY the top three pitchers were all members of the KC Royals bullpen this year.  Its just astounding that that much suckitude was concentrated in so few people in one place simultaneously.

The biggest reason for the dropoff from 2008 to 2009 was the dramatic decrease in the ability of KC’s bullpen to not be horrible.  Removing the worst offenders from the team improves it almost by default.  Because most of those guys were veterans and most of their replacements will be younger players, the team also got cheaper as well as improving by default.

So to sum up this offseason so far, GMDM has added a top 10 draft pick prospect to the minor league system, dramatically improved the defense at catcher while maintaining roughly equal offense and cutting the salary of the position in half and freeing up a spot on the 25-man roster (yay for only carrying 2 catchers!), made the bullpen cheaper, younger, and better (by default the new guys just can’t all be as bad as the old ones), turned a thouroughly league average player who was getting expensive into two probably league averague players who cost the league minimum and are younger, and most importantly, educated himself about the value of advanced statistics and defensive metric systems while simultaneously admitting to his mistakes and fixing them while ignoring sunk costs fallacies.  He still needs to acquire a center fielder, but given how well he’s done so far, I have no doubt GMDM will make a good move on that front before the winter is over as well.  I’ve been critical in the past, but this is just some straight up great work.  Good job GMDM, my hat is tipped.

Tags: dayton moore, gmdm, jason kendall, kansas city, noel arguelles, Royals