It was time: Moore out as Royals president

Owner John Sherman makes the move that has felt both necessary and inevitable for quite some time. It's JJ Picollo's team now.

At exactly 6:02 on October 15, 2014, I became light-headed and a bit woozy.

Delmon Young had just swung and missed on a Greg Holland slider. The crowd at Kauffman Stadium was roaring. The Royals were one out away from closing out a four-game sweep against the Baltimore Orioles in the ALCS. Everyone was standing, but from my perch in section 422, perhaps overcome by the enormity of what was unfolding in front of me, I needed to take a seat. After everything I’d seen since Dayton Moore arrived in Kansas City in 2006, I was overwhelmed by a moment that was as glorious as unexpected.

It was Dayton Moore’s crowning achievement as general manager of the Royals. Through the draft and some shrewd (and heavily criticized) trades, Moore built a team that would take one World Series to a seventh game before winning it all a year later. Two years of baseball nirvana.

It turns out those two years—the best two years in any Royals fan's life—were an oasis in a desert of pitiful baseball. In the 15 other years with Moore at the helm, the Royals finished with a better than .500 record just once. They lost 100 or more games on three separate occasions. The pipeline that fueled the pennant-winning teams went dry. It’s been restocked to a degree, but progress has been minimal and the team took a step back in 2022.

On Wednesday, Moore’s time with the Royals came to an end.

The removal of Moore from this organization is a massive—and completely necessary—change. Is it enough change?

It’s a fair question given that J.J. Picollo remains with the team as General Manager and has added Executive Vice President to his title. Picollo has been in the organization since August 2006, arriving from Atlanta just two months after Moore took the general manager role. Their ties go all the way back to the early 1990s and George Mason University where Moore coached after graduation. Picollo, while he has interviewed for general manager positions in the past, is very much viewed as Moore’s right-hand man, his trusted lieutenant. It’s been that way since the day he arrived.

It’s clear Sherman is convinced Picollo is the man for the job. At the press conference, you could sense the trust the owner has in his general manager. It is complete and total. So now Picollo gets to step out of Moore’s shadow and implement changes and we will learn how (or if) their philosophies differ.

(By the way, the whole power structure within the Royals front office this year has been strange with Moore as President and Picollo as GM. Nobody seems to know who has been making the decisions. Moves happen and it was anyone’s guess as to who would address the media. Just weird.)

I’m expecting an overhaul in the use of data from the analytics group. The vibe I get from Picollo is he’s very much open to the new school as it were. As Sherman mentioned, analytics is not limited to in-game strategy or lineup construction. Often, used properly, it’s to identify areas of weakness within the team and the strengths of others. Yes, scouting absolutely matters, but analytics can be used in a complementary fashion in transactions like trades. As they turn more towards data, I do think the Royals will become more transactional, using their farm system to engineer more trades.

“We have a top-notch data analytics group, led by Dr. Daniel Mack. I think sometimes that the data is not as prominent as maybe it should be in this organization,” Sherman said. “We have to make more data-driven decisions…That’s not criticizing anyone, that’s not stating anything about the future but that’s really about where I go because otherwise it’s anecdotal, it’s emotional…that’s what we all react to.”

Read that again…The data is not as prominent as it should be. We have to make more data-driven decisions. Sherman emphasized that the team has plenty of data on hand. He’s dissatisfied with how they’ve been using that data.

The above quote is simply amazing coming from an owner. Sherman wants to be on the cutting edge. I don’t think Picollo (or anyone) would’ve been the hire if they weren’t on the same page regarding the organization becoming more data-driven.

One thing that has always kind of amazed me about Moore is that he made only three legitimate blockbuster deals during his time in Kansas City. I’m defining “blockbuster” as trading away a top-rated prospect or one of the best players on the team. You’re well acquainted with all of them—the Zack Greinke to Milwaukee deal, the Wil Myers to Tampa trade and Sean Manaea as part of the package to Oakland to get Ben Zobrist at the 2015 deadline. All trades were smashing success for the club. Yet Moore seemed to continually resist other opportunities that could’ve strengthened the team. Specifically, I’m thinking of Whit Merrifield from a few years ago. For whatever the reason, Moore just couldn’t bring himself to part with certain players.

It’s probably not a coincidence that Sherman paid homage to Picollo’s work at the trade deadline this year. A deadline that saw Merrifield finally shipped out of Kansas City and an accumulation of minor league talent to restock a system that has seen the graduation of several top prospects this year.

“It’s not just about player development. It’s also about your willingness to change your players,” Sherman said. “I don’t want to use the word ‘churn,’ because these are athletes, but building an organization where you have excess talent that would allow you to go get more talent to fill needs and maybe off-setting needs with another team.”

“I think on one hand it’s about development, on one hand, it’s about data-driven decision-making, on one hand, it’s being willing and trying to upgrade your team all the time.”

This is so, so telling. The Royals aren’t developing enough quality players, they aren’t using data correctly and they haven’t been proactive in looking outside the organization for upgrades. Sherman seems to understand what baseball is about relative to his market better than Moore.

When you look at it the way Sherman was articulating, it’s not a surprise he decided it was time to move on from Moore. The Process was rigid, unable to fold in data and unwilling to make moves that could benefit the club. Moore believed that developing good people was more important than developing good ballplayers. While that may be an admirable trait for a leader, it can cloud judgment. We’ve seen what it does in Kansas City: it prevents necessary moves from being made and commits the club to players who simply aren’t good enough.

“It’s not change in the culture,” Sherman said. “We care about people, but we want to win baseball games.”

Amen.

I think most of us have a complicated relationship with Moore, which is completely understandable. On one hand, there are the back-to-back World Series appearances. I’m barely 200 words into this article and I’ve mentioned that accomplishment twice. Because it’s important.

Beginning in 1986, the Royals started drifting toward Baseball Siberia. They had great and notable individual players in Bret Saberhagen and Bo Jackson and George Brett was coming to the end of his Hall of Fame career, but the team's successes were in the past. By the time the Glass family bought the team, the Royals were simply irrelevant. Then, the first several years with the Glass family in charge were dreadful seasons for the most part. Prior to Moore, they had pushed the franchise to the edge of ruin. It was a barely functioning organization.

It’s a fact that Moore joined the Royals at a time when things were at rock bottom. Moore, somehow, got them to trust him and his process. They opened up their wallets to invest in scouting and international development and then they got the hell out of the way and let the baseball people do the work. This alone may have been Moore’s greatest accomplishment in Kansas City.

However, the Process was slow. It was, despite the way Moore talked, never guaranteed. You would’ve thought that after the Royals won the World Series in 2015 and needed to undergo another rebuild a couple of seasons later, Moore would apply the lessons learned early in his tenure. Almost seven years after Wade Davis delivered the final strike to clinch the title, I think we can safely say he did not.

Bad drafts combined with an organizational inertia delayed any kind of rebuild. In retrospect, it’s understandable that the Royals didn’t break up the team in the aftermath of the championship. The pipeline that Moore talked up and used to build the title team, was completely bare. They didn’t really have a choice.

From the 2011 draft to 2017, the Royals selected 42 players who eventually reached the majors. (Not everyone played for the Royals. Others played for the Royals and moved on.) Their cumulative fWAR with the Royals: 13.1.

That’s a failure by any standard. It really isn’t a surprise the team has struggled to find wins over the last several years. Moore knew the Royals, because of their market, needed to build a roster that leaned heavily on homegrown players. Yet, he couldn’t make that happen on a consistent basis.

Leadership can grow stale. The message loses its meaning if it doesn’t evolve. Change becomes necessary.

“I think there will be (other changes), but I don’t want to get out in front of JJ on that,” Sherman said.

It’s always interesting when someone who has been the faithful number two for so long takes the reins. Certainly, Picollo has his own ideas on how things should be done. Maybe some of them are the same, but I’m guessing from the way Sherman addressed the media, the important philosophies between Moore and Picollo have diverged. It always felt like Moore had a difficult time embracing change or even simply evolving with the game. Picollo, I imagine, will be a bit more up-to-date on the current trends and more willing to try something new and different.

If Sherman thought he was getting Moore 2.0, he wouldn’t have made that hire. It was clear that Sherman didn’t have patience for The Process so I’m more than willing to give Sherman the benefit of the doubt here. I don’t think it’s likely at all the new boss will be the same as the old boss.

The dismissal of Moore is just the opening salvo in what should be a tsunami of change at One Royal Way. I am extremely confident that Mike Matheny—and most of the coaching staff, including Cal Eldred—will be the next to go.

Matheny seems cut very much from the same cloth as Moore, and was very much a classic Moore hire, so would not be surprising to see him exit. Plus, Picollo will need to put his thumbprint on the team as soon as possible. He needs to make a statement that this is his club and that means he should have the freedom to hire his own manager. And, let’s be honest…Matheny has made that decision incredibly easy for Picollo and Sherman.

Can I admit something? I had been feeling a bit ambivalent regarding the ownership of John Sherman the last couple of years as he’s largely stayed in the background as obvious issues have come to a head. If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve taken a skeptical view of his reasoning to build a ballpark downtown.

However, after his press conference, my confidence in ownership is as high as it’s been since Ewing Kauffman was in charge. Sherman hit the balance perfectly between paying homage to Moore’s successes while making clear the recent results—and the current process—were not good enough. Every question he answered revealed an owner who is deeply knowledgeable about the trends and developments in the game. Owning the Royals isn’t some sort of vanity project. Sherman is a committed fan of the game and his team. And he wants to win.

Yes, this is an owner who is totally engaged. He referenced the change in hitting coaches in the middle of the season, listing the new crew by name and pointing out Drew Saylor, who has been so instrumental in the success of the minor league bats, was Picollo’s hire. Sherman properly listed the teams who have had repeated success at developing pitchers, including his old team in Cleveland. Sure, this may seem trivial, but after the press conference that Detroit Tigers CEO Chris Illitch held when he dismissed his general manager in July, it’s fairly clear that not every owner is similarly plugged into the game.

I was just impressed with the ease of Sherman’s answers in the press conference. Change isn’t easy, but it can be necessary. It feels good to be able to say that it seems like the Royals are in good hands going forward.

Maybe in a couple of years, I’ll be back in section 422, watching the Royals clinch another pennant.