Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
January 09, 2009
The Bloomquist is off the Rose

Long suffering Royals fan Rob Neyer comes down on the Royals for signing Willie Bloomquist to a two-year deal. Dayton Moore describes the .322 OBA hitter as "an on-base guy."

Really? He's a hustler and he hustles? Do you get double-secret extra credit for that? And this might be the first time that a player with a .322 career on-base percentage has been described as "an on-base guy." At least by a modern, (presumably) Web-equipped baseball man. Why not also describe Bloomquist as a "doubles guy"? After all, he did hit one double last year.

As a commenter here points out, the Royals have now committed $11.4 million in 2009 to Kyle Farnsworth, Mike Jacobs, Horacio Ramirez and Willie Bloomquist. For $11.4 million you can actually get a good player. But of course this is one of the things foolish organizations do: They complain that they can't afford good players after spending millions of dollars on not-good players.

I had hope for Dayton Moore, but this winter shows either he's not allowed to build the team the way he wants or that he's simply all talk. He's quickly moving into the Dave Littlefield school of GMs. I hope he doesn't do as much damage as Dave did in Pittsburgh.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:43 PM | Free Agents | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Rob - hope and pray for new onwers that acted like Ewing Kaufmann and put the extra change on the table to make the club competitive each year.

Posted by: Bob Tufts at January 9, 2009 08:56 PM

A somewhat related aside, I loved this story in the Seattle PI a few years back about the Mariners attendance dropping when the team was playing bad, and what it meant for Willie Bloomquist:

----------------------
It's strange to see Safeco Field like this, with completely vacant sections in the upper deck and rows and rows of buttless seats everywhere else.

"I never thought I'd see the day where there was less than 20,000," said utility man Willie Bloomquist. "(Tuesday night) was the first time I've walked out for a game and gone, 'Wow.' It's a little odd being able to hear conversations with fans."

"Really?" I wondered. "What did they say?"

"You (expletive) suck, Bloomquist!" Bloomquist said.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/267548_moore21.html

Posted by: Aaron at January 9, 2009 09:41 PM

The owners could have all the money in the world, but if the GM spends it like he has so far it won't matter.

Posted by: Trebor at January 9, 2009 11:04 PM


i really want the royals to be good. i want them to succeed. signing a 31 year old "utility" guy who can't play SS is bad. guaranteed contracts to guys like this is bad/dumb.


Posted by: bob at January 10, 2009 02:50 AM

Everyone here in KC was so excited when Moore was hired.

"He was in Moneyball!"

And he quickly proved to be just as dumb as every other GM by signing 12 1b/DH types when we already had about 15 of them.

It's really a sign of how bad he's done, when the fact that he signed someone who ISN't a ab/dh should be seen as a positive

Posted by: shthar at January 10, 2009 03:02 AM

The "commenter" Neyer refers to had apparently been to the Fangraphs site earlier, hope he at least gave a hat tip.

Posted by: t ball at January 10, 2009 09:00 AM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?