Speculative Hope

Hope has been restored to fans of the Kansas City Royals baseball organization.

Sort of.

Three events have occurred in the past week that have given the gluttons-for-punishment faithful a reason to open their sports page in the morning:


* General Manager Allard Baird was fired and replaced by Dayton Moore, formerly the Assistant GM to John Schuerholz in Atlanta.

* Zack Greinke makes his first rehab start for Double-A Wichita.

* The Royals draft Luke Hochevar #1 overall in the 2006 MLB Draft.


First, and most importantly, the Allard Baird Era has finally come to an end. His tenure may go down as one of the worst GM stints in history. His legacy is one of botched trades, misguided free agent signings and bungled drafts. As George Costanza would say, "I've got it all!"

But that's not the whole story. In the days and weeks leading up to the dismissal of Baird, more and more stories were leaked about how owner David Glass and his son, team president Dan Glass, entangled themselves in some of the baseball decisions. Tales of trades vetoed and draft picks scuttled due to money issues are just some of the ways in which Baird was supposedly (read: likely) handcuffed by ownership.

So, Baird being gone definitely feels like a step in the right direction, but is it really? Not if the Glass family continues to harass their general manager. But this is where things are starting to look up. According to new GM Dayton Moore, he was given every assurance that he would have full autonomy over baseball decisions. Now, we can only wait and see if this holds true, but it certainly sounds like the Glasses have come to the realization that running a Major League Baseball team is better left to folks who have experience in running Major League Baseball teams.

If things go according to plan, the Royals organization might end up following in the footsteps of two other teams who had similar situations. Everyone remembers what a nightmare it was to be an executive in the Yankees' front office back when George Steinbrenner thought he was Branch Rickey. Of course, once George realized that he was better off letting the qualified people he'd hired run the show, the Yankees reeled off a string of World Series wins and playoff appearances that left every other team salivating. And you can make a similar parallel to the Braves, circa Ted Turner Era. The Braves were nearly as bad in the 80's as the Royals are now, with some of the responsibility falling on Turner's over-inflated ego. Then he hired John Schuerholz away from the Royals and the Braves proceeded to win their division every year since. The Royals can only hope that the GM merry-go-round comes full circle with the hiring of Schuerholz's prodigy Moore.

The second event that should have got the blood flowing in Royals fans' veins was the recent rehab start for one-time phenom Zack Greinke. Greinke had missed the first 2+ months of the season with psychological problems. Those issues have apparently been ironed out and Zack made a solid, if not dominating, start for the Wichita Wranglers. This is good news as Greinke was supposed to be the anchor of this year's pitching staff (although, "anchor" in this case sounds more like a weight intended to keep something immobile rather than a stabilizing force). Not too long ago, one baseball analyst exclaimed, "I have seen the future of pitching and his name is Zack Greinke." When you have that sort of potential and the track record to back it up, it comes as a major blow when your team finds out that you may not be pitching for the next couple of months, or possibly, ever again. With Greinke back in the fold, that's one less rotation spot the Royals will have to fill with the likes of Joe Mays and his ilk. Of course, we can only hope that Greinke comes back as strong or stronger than his impressive performance in his rookie year.

Finally, the Royals bucked conventional wisdom and selected Luke Hochevar as the number one overall pick in the 2006 MLB Draft. While most (including myself) were touting left-hander Andrew Miller as the obvious first choice, word spread that Miller's contract demands would be problematic. And while it looks like another pick on the cheap by the Royals, four other teams felt the same way and let Miller slide to #6 overall.

I think this is still a decent pick by the Royals. If you'll indulge me, allow me to pretend for a moment. Hochevar was considered a top five talent in last year's draft, a draft that was considered longer on talent than this year's. Let's pretend that instead of picking Alex Gordon (a junior at the University of Nebraska) with the #2 pick last year (when he had #1 talent), we picked Hochevar and Gordon stayed in school. Hochevar wouldn't have been thought of as a reach and the Royals would have been assured the best talent in the draft the next year. I realize that it's sort of convoluted logic, but the main idea is the same: we got the best possible player available last year and a player that last year was considered to be more talented than anyone in this year's draft.

The only concern one might have about selecting Hochevar would be in having to deal with his agent, the notorious Scott Boras. But the Royals certainly had the framework for a contract worked out before they drafted Hochevar or else they would have drafted someone else. Combine that with the fact that Hochevar might be a head-case (considering his hold-out and agent shuffling last year) and you have some real reasons to be concerned. But during his press conference and subsequent interviews, the phrases he kept repeating were, "I just want to pitch my tail off for the Kansas City Royals" and "I'm ready to put my nose to the grindstone" and "I'll work harder than anyone on the team."

Now, new GM Dayton Moore was not allowed to participate in either the Royals draft or the Braves due to conflict of interest. But you can bet your bottom dollar that he wasn't sitting on his front porch in Atlanta sipping mint juleps either. Word is that Moore didn't have Miller #1 on his draft board. Which implies that Moore at the very least sent some sort of telepathic signals to the Royals scouting department before the draft. This draft will be the first measurable data point in the Kansas City career of Dayton Moore. We can only hope that Luke Hochevar pans out and proves Moore right.

This is why the title of this column is "Speculative Hope". There are no assurances that any of these moves will pan out. If we look back at Allard Baird's career, we can find a number of transactions that looked reasonable at the time but ended up blowing up in his face. So while hope has been restored to Royals fans, there's still reason to be leery. It's like being a dog who has been abused by his owner. You get walloped enough times and you're going to cringe and scamper the next time he makes a move. And even if the owner has a miraculous turnaround and starts treating you nicely, it will still take a little time before you trust him enough to let him pet you. And Royals fans are due for a little petting.