Even though the Royals lost the finale of their nine-game West Coast road trip on Wednesday, 5-0 to Shohei Ohtani and the Los Angeles Angels, this has been the best stretch of games for Kansas City this year.

They finished the trip with a 5-4 record. That comes after a homestand where they went 4-6—albeit with tougher competition that what they just faced in California. The Royals have now won nine games in June out of 20 played. That comes after winning nine games in May…out of 29.

The starting pitching has showed well of late, but the offense remains inconsistent. They scored 18 runs in the first two games of the series in Los Angeles, but were shutout in the finale. (Yes, Ohtani.) However, the Royals have been shutout in five of their 11 losses this month. They have a -18 run differential this month.

If June proves anything, it’s that they’re not as bad as they played in May, but they’re still a long way from anything resembling relevancy.

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Royals president Dayton Moore has increasingly come under fire for another lackluster season, along with his manager, coaches and rest of the front office. It was under the cloud of disappointment of the 2022 season that he met with the media earlier this week, during a summer baseball camp for his C You In The Major Leauges foundation. Quotes are taken from 810 WHB.

We’re going to continue to work extremely hard. We’re not asking you to accept anything. We’re accountable for what we do, but we’re working extremely hard. We believe in our players. I think the focus has never been better. The support we have in ownership is very strong.

We lead off with a quintessential Moore quote. The team isn’t just plain working to get better, they’re working hard. Extremely hard. With focus.

Moore has said this (or something similar to this) before. In fact, as the Royals have stumbled regularly on his watch, this seems like an annual statement. The thing is, I’ve never doubted him when he’s said this. Yes, I believe he’s a guy who puts in the hours. I think his entire staff probably works as hard as any other front office in the major leagues. You want to work in professional baseball? Be prepared to sacrifice because these men and women are supremely dedicated to their craft. The days (and nights) are long.

But there’s a difference between working hard and working smart. The Royals front office may be grinding along with the rest of major league baseball, but are they working smarter? Putting in the hours is one thing. Are you making progress toward your goal? Because if you’re working hard and not making progress, I’d argue that’s just time not well spent.

You can look at the standings and the won-loss record and argue that no, they are not working smarter.

Moore also discussed Cal Eldred and his role as pitching coach.

Cal is doing a tremendous job as far as his attitude is concerned. I know there’s an attitude of collaboration that exists from all of our pitching people to make sure that we’re providing our players with the right information, we’re making the necessary adjustments for them to be successful and we’re seeing some growth. We’re seeing some growth take place. I know it doesn’t happen as quickly as we’d all like.

I’m not sure I care about Cal Eldred’s attitude. Instead, I care about the results of the young pitchers in this rotation. How is Daniel Lynch progressing? Or Brady Singer? What about Carlos Hernández? Results matter. Not the attitude of the pitching coach. Or how he collaborates with the rest of the “pitching people”.

This is a much more gentle quote than the classic from last month where Moore lectured us that if we’re going to criticize Eldred for the failings of a Singer, we had to be prepared to give him credit for the success of a Lynch. The great thing about that quote was in the immediate aftermath, Lynch was rocked in four of his next five starts. Be careful where you decide to assign credit.

Now, we’re seeing adjustments that are leading to growth. Indeed, this road trip to the west coast has been generally a successful one for the rotation, but it’s just a handful of games and we’ve seen that kind of progress before. It isn’t sticky with this group of starters. Moore acknowledged that growth isn’t happening as fast as anyone would like. And isn’t that the key question that really needs to be asked? Why isn’t this rotation developing? Pitching development isn’t a linear exercise. Success isn’t guaranteed by repetition. Adjustments have to be made. Some young and inexperienced starting pitchers have found success, they just don’t happen to pitch in Kansas City.

Using the invaluable Stathead tool at Baseball-Reference, I looked up every starting pitcher who debuted since 2020 and has thrown at least 30 innings over those three years. (The cutoff seems extra-arbitrary but it will make sense in a moment.) Sorted by bWAR, here are the top 10:

Full Stathead results are here.

Hey, a Brady Singer sighting at 10! However, note that Singer is the only member of the top 10 with a below-league average ERA+, if only just. Also, note that there are a couple of Tigers pitchers ahead of him. The Tigers are actually the only team with two starters in the top 10, even though Casey Mize is out after undergoing Tommy John surgery this month.

That got me thinking about how have teams done overall in developing starters in the short-term over the last two-plus seasons. The table below lists the teams that have featured more than three starters, ranked by bWAR.

Powered by Mize and Tarik Skubal, the Tigers are easily setting the pace with their young arms. The Braves have collected most of their bWAR on the arm of Ian Anderson. Trevor Rogers is setting the pace in Miami, but is helped by Sixto Sánchez and his 1.5 bWAR. Bailey Ober and Joe Ryan have 3.0 bWAR between them in Minnesota.

The point is, the teams with multiple starters posting fWAR have one or two pitchers doing most of the heavy lifting. Here are the Royals’ five starters and where they rank out of 52 pitchers in the study.

I first ran this table last week and the results have improved since then. But one quality week of starting pitching can’t make up for over two years of stumbles. The Royals just don’t have anyone that jumps off the list. The potential is there for someone like Lynch and the results have kind of been there for Singer, but it’s not what you would expect based on what’s happening for other teams. Jackson Kowar is the drag on the results (and the reason I had the innings cutoff set at 30). Remove him and you have four pitchers with a cumulative 3.9 bWAR. That moves them up the list by a couple.

The Royals can’t get this wrong. They have to have this crop of young starting pitchers to place not just one in the top 10 in bWAR. They need at least two and they need them to rank well up the list. That’s not happening so far. And if we’re setting a marker down today, that’s a failure.

I included the ages in the tables above because Moore likes to talk about how it takes time for young pitchers to develop. Again, that’s just not always the case. The Royals may be working hard at trying to develop their starting pitchers, but the hard work doesn’t matter when the results aren’t there. Besides, their young starting pitchers aren’t all that young when framed on this list.

Back to Moore…

I have plenty of sleepless nights like everybody else and we all care deeply and that’s what makes this community so special. We care deeply about our teams. We want our teams to do well. We want our pitching coaches, and our managers and all of our players to do well. It’s frustrating when they don’t. The important thing is with Cal is his attitude is great, and he’s working extremely hard just like he did when he was with those players coming through the minor leagues. I’m confident that we will get though it and we’ll see where we are at the end of the year.

If you’ve been hoping that Eldred will follow hitting coach Terry Bradshaw to the exit, you’re not going to get that in the next couple of months. I’ve said that all along as the drumbeat has grown demanding firings. It’s not going to happen. The front office simply can’t axe the hitting coach and the pitching coach in the middle of the season. That would be tantamount to an admission that they have no idea what they’re doing. (Insert your own comment here. I teed it up for you.) Outside of an open revolt from the pitchers, Eldred is safe for the rest of the season. Once the year comes to a close in October? I would bet Eldred is gracefully shown the door, perhaps reassigned to another position in the organization. It will be a mutual decision.

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Here’s Moore on the rebuild and its timing…

We’ve done this in this market before. We’ve learned a lot in this journey and this process. I’m confident that we’re making the right decisions today that will impact our future in a positive way in the next three to four years. Whether we realize it or not, whether we want to accept it or not, this is a necessary phase of what we have to go through.

Wait…did Moore just move the goalposts on contention again? Is he saying the Royals are three to four years out from challenging for a division title?

Let’s do some math. If 2018 was the first year of the rebuild, we’re currently in the fifth year of the latest process. Add four years to that and we’re looking at a rebuild that will take…nine years?!? Are you serious? Nine years to rebuild in the AL Central?

To say it’s a “necessary phase” is just insulting. It’s necessary because of the stumbles and lack of foresight of the front office. They should’ve moved quicker once it was obvious after the 2016 season that the current championship core wasn’t able to bring that back. Instead the strategy was to bank the draft picks and bet on development. And now we’re here. Five years into a rebuild and on pace for 102 losses.

That reminds me of another classic Moore quote from his very first year as general manager back in 2006:

If you make enough good decisions, three-year plans turn into two-year plans and five-year plans turn into three-year plans. If you make bad decisions, 10-year plans turn into no plan.

We’re officially in the danger zone, bordering on a supposed “10-year plan.” And judging from the decisions that have been made by this front office, we’re about ready to flip to “no plan.”

I don’t think a front office survive that.

Into The Fountains

Are you buying what Dayton Moore is selling?