Royals sign 4 Free Agents in One Day!! Baird pulls big move!

[Baseball=Life]

Many of you know I grew up in Overland Park, Kansas, going to Royals games all the time in the 1980s. I was there all throughout 1985, from the beginning of the season to the moment we won Game 7 of the World Series.

These 4 acquisitions are a case of too little too late.

Royals GM Allard Baird, and the Glass ownership, deserve no credit whatsoever. It is unfortunate. Kansas City is a great baseball town, with great baseball history, and deserves a better fate.

Former Royals owner Ewing Kauffman supported the team and community to an amazing extent--he even paid for college for high school graduates of the local magnet school. Glass has put relatively next to nothing into the team.

This is a team that lost an American League record 20 games in a row last year.

Kansas City went wrong when ownership left the Kauffman family, but the Royals had a second chance, because of thier effective scouting, in 2003. The Royals were coming off a horrendous 62-100 season record in '02. Under first-year starting pitcher Runelvys Hernandez and veteran pitcher Jose Lima, the Royals started out the 2003 season by winning their first 9 straight, and 15 of their first 18. The team was winning more games than they had since 1987...

The pitching staff was miraculously going deep into games, and even closing them out, with a cast of unknowns and has-beens, even beyond Hernandez (4-3, 3.05 ERA pre-All Star Break).

The starting rotation featured the likes of Kris Wilson (4-0 pre all-star break), Chris George (9 wins before break), Darrell May (4-4, 3.54 before break) and, most dominant of all, Jose Lima (5-0, 2.52 before break). Rookie closer Mike MacDougal even racked up 24 saves before July. Soon after the break, the rotation would find even more room simlar types: Jimmy Gobble, Brian Anderson, etc.

They were 42-38 at the All-Star Break, still 4 games above .500 after having fallen back down to earth in late May / early June.

Carlos Beltran was still a Royal. It looked as though the unique provision of Mike Sweeney's contract, which said he could seek employment elsewhere if the Royals didn't have a .500 season record, would actually be triggered. Attendence started rebounding.

It was at this point, still mid-summer, that the Royals should have traded Beltran for quality prospects that would be MLB-ready by 2004. He had more trade value, with the 2nd half of the 2003 season still unplayed. Instead of biting the 2003 bullet and making the one move that would have given them a chance of actually contending in the AL Central in 2004, they sat on Beltran for another year. It was delusional to argue they could contend in 2003, even with their strong first half.

So make no mistake, and attribute no credit to the Glass/Baird owner/GM team for their recent pickups of just-serviceable new Royals.... they have turned it into merely a glorified AAA team... a that might not even beat the crosstown Independent League Kansas City T-Bones 4 out of 7 games.