The tao of Dayton Moore
The Royals' GM believes in baseball. And in 2021, that feels refreshing.
Chances are you’re not a member of the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club. Thanks to YouTube and an intrepid Mariners fan, you certainly heard about their guest speaker at their February 5th virtual meeting.
Now former Seattle Mariners president Kevin Mather gave a presentation and took questions from the assembled Rotary Club Zoomers. In just under an hour he managed to insult foreign-born players for not speaking “acceptable” English, made several inappropriate comments about individual Mariners, pulled back the curtain on negotiations that painted leadership in that particular organization in an unflattering light, revealed they would be manipulating the service time of their top prospect, and somehow found time to complain about his parking lot operator wanting to let people park for free.
Whew.
The problem wasn’t that Mather actually verbalized these things. Scratch that. That a president of a Major League Baseball club would be comfortable enough to say those things is astonishing. But not surprising. What Mather said was confirmation of what baseball fans and players have long assumed about how leadership in the game thinks and operates at the highest levels. He said the stuff out loud you’re not supposed to say out loud; disrespecting the players and the game. This wasn’t a clubby MLB ownership meeting where it’s a bunch of insanely wealthy dudes gathered with brandy and cigars discussing how to game the system to their advantage. It was a damn Rotary Club breakfast.
On Tuesday afternoon, Royals General Manager Dayton Moore was center stage in his own Zoom meeting. This wasn’t a Rotary Club function, but a meeting with the media. It was, as far as Moore press conferences go, standard fare.
But one couldn’t help but watch how Moore goes about his business—how he’s genuine in what he says—and draw the contrast between what you were hearing coming from Surprise versus what came from the Bellevue Rotary Club.
“We’ve got so much respect for major league players and what they endure and the discipline it takes to play in the major leagues…I think when you look where our players are, their experience level, they are at a point in time there is a comfort level, there is a belief in what they can achieve together…We feel really good about our team.”
What may be standard for Moore feels atypical in the universe of Major League Baseball leadership. Like Mather, Moore is honest. Almost to a fault. But the approach—and apparently the belief systems—couldn’t be more different.
Moore has been the Royals’ general manager for almost 15 years now. He’s suffered the virtual slings and arrows that go along with the job, but he doesn’t care. That’s not a bad thing or a detachment from reality. That’s a self-assuredness that possesses that he needs to do his job. He touched on it Tuesday when talking about major-league players, describing them as some of the most self-confident athletes he’s ever been around. But he could’ve been talking about himself.
Moore knows what he believes and he’s comfortable communicating that. And he believes in people. He believes in his players, in ownership and in the fans. He understands the difference between right and wrong and if ever faced with a choice, by golly, you know he will choose what’s right. And in the big picture, he wants to do right by everyone invested in the Kansas City Royals Baseball Club—meaning those both fiscally and emotionally—which means build a winner.
He is singularly focused on this. And that means putting the best team on the field every year, damn the current status of the rebuild. It’s quite the contrast from the current philosophies we see from teams in similar market sizes.
“(We) focus on simply what we do and not understanding what the other 29 teams do…what they’re under, what the direction of ownership is, where their opportunity is to win.
We don’t know any other way. You’re trying to inspire people to follow your team. And you’re trying to inspire young people to be a part of this game and want to play this game. So I think what we’ve always tried to do is be as competitive as we possibly can.”
This is the essence of General Manager Dayton Moore boiled down to a single quote. The inspiration. The connection he’s looking to build upon. How the Royals mean something to the community and to individuals. As the Royals have embarked upon this, the second rebuild of his tenure in Kansas City, I think of his insistence on competitiveness. It doesn’t always work. Lord knows, I’ve mocked the idea at times. (In particular, I’m thinking of the 2009 Royals with Yuniesky Betancourt and Jose Guillen and Mike Jacobs and the insistence at around this same time of year 12 years ago that the Royals would be competitive. They lost 97 games.)
But through the prism of the game in 2021, it’s easy to be a little more forgiving. (The fact that Moore is a different GM than he was back in 2009 helps.) There are so many teams that aren’t trying to put a quality product on the field…that are actively trying not to win. There are so many teams open to manipulating service time. There are so many teams crying poverty. Baseball is at a crossroads and it’s because there are too many people in charge who don’t give a damn about the game. It’s from the commissioner’s office down to the individual teams. They’re in it for the cash and the status and reasons that don’t jive with trying to win.
It’s that moment from Lords of the Realm that remains relevant:
At one of Ueberroth’s early meetings with the owners, the commissioner described a scenario in which he would sit each owner down in front of a red button and a black button. If they pushed the red button, they’d win the World Series but lose $10 million. If they pushed the black button, they’d make $4 million and finish in the middle of the pack. “The problem is,” Ueberroth scolded, “most of you would push the red one.”
Dayton Moore would push the red button. You get the feeling if it were deemed legal, he’d push the red button so damn often he’d develop a Jeremy Affeldt-sized blister.
There seems a desire to tie the recent analytics revolution in the game to the shift away from competitiveness. It’s not analytics that is responsible for the acceleration of this development where so many teams are actively avoiding the attempt at winning. It’s the perversion of analytics. But then, when you have a revolution there’s always someone willing to practice the dark arts to gain even the slimmest of edges against their competition. (Hello, Houston!) And we know that Moore is a throwback to another era. He’s not anti-analytics, but the old scout in him and his old baseball soul won’t let him fully succumb. He’s the general manager that straddles the millennium. He’s looking to improve his team every offseason to provide that familiar shot of optimism you would feel with spring.
The Vegas over/unders are out for 2021 win totals and most major bookmakers have the Royals at 71 1/2. That feels low, but at this moment it sure seems like they’ll be fighting for third place in the division. Maybe…Maybe if they catch some breaks, they can hit 81 wins. The playoffs feel like they’re still out of reach. But damn, it feels good to feel good about this team. And credit for that goes to Moore for his vision and ownership for giving him the means to execute that vision.
This isn’t to say Moore shouldn’t be immune to criticism. (If he brings back Betancourt for a third go-round so help me…) But he’s made moves this winter with the idea he’s making his team more competitive and I think he’s accomplished that. The Royals are better today and their potential for tomorrow has in no way been compromised. They are on the right path. And Moore has operated in a way that makes Kansas City a destination. The Royals aren’t some small market team crying poor and tearing their team down every winter. They’re building toward something. They’re doing it the right way. And the players take notice.
“I think it’s really important to try to win in each and every year…To be a great steward of the game and to continue to grow the game in the ways that we think are the most healthy you’ve got to bust your tail for the good of the players, the fans and the coaching staff and ownership to put the best team on the field. Period. That’s what it’s all about.”
Indeed.
With everything going on in and around the game, it’s a good time to be a fan of the Kansas City Royals.