Cutting HIs Losses

Last November I defended Royals' General Manager Dayton Moore in his acquisition of Mike Jacobs, a move roundly panned by baseball writers reputable and obscure alike. "Dayton Moore isn't stupid," I scolded. While I stand by that assertion today, I also am forced to acknowledge that those writers aren't stupid either. The Jacobs trade clearly stands out as the worst move Moore has made since taking over as GM in June of 2006. Anyone could have seen this as early as May of last season.

Including Dayton Moore.

So now the Royals have released him. Unconditionally.

Thankfully, his contract was only for one year, so it's off the books. But that's little consolation to Royals fans who watched a Leo Nunez-less bullpen give away 7th and 8th inning leads all summer while Nunez (Jacobs' trade opposite) racked up 27 saves for the Marlins.

I'll still defend the trade on the grounds that Moore was trying to inject some power into a woefully weak major league lineup, and Jacobs appeared, if not an unlikely contributor, a potential one. Moore's behavior this off season indicates that he's given up on the major league roster; he knows it's going to be awful in 2010, and he's willing to take his lumps in exchange for amateur players filed away in the minors (see the team's acquisition of 19 year-old Cuban defector Noel Arguelles).

Moore is entering his fourth full season as a major league GM. I'm comfortable with acknowledging that he's still learning the job. It's an impossible balance, with a small market team like the Royals, between cultivating a healthy long-term farm system that won't produce big league results for three-to-five years down the line and actually improving the big league roster. I think last year showed Moore that the worst of the best free agents available in any off-season are still worse that the best of the worst players in the farm system.