Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 31, 2008
The Tiger Path

Sam Mellinger looks at how the Tigers went from laughingstocks to champions and compares that path to the one taken by the Royals:

It's funny, though. If you look at how the Tigers went from 119 losses to World Series contender, and squint your eyes a little while you're doing it, it might look like what the Royals are doing now.

It started with the hiring of a new general manager (Dombrowski), who brought in people he'd been successful with in the past (in Florida). They beefed up scouting and player development, focusing on consistently producing major-league players from within (like Curtis Granderson and Justin Verlander).

They were mostly ridiculed for their first major free-agent signing (Ivan Rodriguez) and then told they overpaid for a risky outfielder (Magglio OrdoƱez).

In order, change the parentheses to Dayton Moore, Atlanta, Alex Gordon, Billy Butler, Gil Meche and Jose Guillen and it's at least similar in practice, if not results.

"We've got a lot of work to do here, and it's a lot of fun work," Royals general manager Dayton Moore says. "We're building something we're going to be proud of at some point in time. I don't know when that's going to happen. But we're confident."

Moore and the Royals get to test their plan against the Tigers this afternoon.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:27 AM | Team Evaluation | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Yes, but until ownership in KC stops regularly pocketing revenue sharing and its share of MLB central revenues, it will take another generstion (and perhaps new owners) to make this a competitive team on a yearly basis.

Posted by: rmt at March 31, 2008 10:22 AM
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