Kansas City News Blog

By CHRIS RASMUSSEN

For more than a decade, watching the most generic of losing teams, Royals fans have been hopeless.

We're so used to losing that we can't even imagine winning. It's not that fans hate the current product. Some are just apathetic; others accept it, believing it's not possible to field a winning baseball team in this town because we're too small a market. They accept and therefore enable the flinty indifference of David Glass, discounting the recent success of the A’s, the Rays and the Twins, who aren't exactly baseball’s financial behemoths.

Thankfully -- and not too late for Kansas City baseball’s future -- David Glass is doing what he should have done a decade ago.

He's finally hiring smart personnel, opening up the checkbook and staying the hell out of the way.

Since Glass hired Dayton Moore, the Royals at least try to spend money, even a little extra to lure Jose Guillen and Gil Meche to play in KC and suffer through 90-loss seasons. Moore skillfully navigates baseball’s scrap heap, acquiring both Brian Bannister and Joakim Soria for virtually nothing. Another Moore acquisition, tonight’s starter Kyle Davies, broke the Royals 12-game losing streak in his first start and an 11-game road losing streak in his second.

Most promising, Glass is letting Moore spend money on player development, as witnessed by last week’s amateur baseball draft. The team almost exclusively selected high school players in the draft's opening rounds -- even some who had hired the feared agent Scott Boras -- a risky and expensive proposition as the draftees may opt for college if they find the Royals’ offer too low. Glass, however, provided Moore the financial resources to sign them. 810AM’s Soren Petro alertly points to a development that bears repeating -- hell, shouting from rooftops: KC made good offers to several of these players, even offering “life changing money” to their seventh-round pick, Jason Esposito. Tim Melville, who has first-round talent but dropped to the fourth round due to his financial demands, actually wants to sign with the Royals.

This is ultimately the only way the Royals can field a competitive team.

At last. Hope.