The Royals, on a national level, are drastically undercovered. That's due not only to their talent-bereft lineup but to their small-market, flyoverland location -- without consistently interesting baseball, a team like the Royals is pretty boring. No mystery here. Thank goodness, then, for Kansas City Star (and recently syndicated SI.com blogger) Joe Posnanski. Posnanski's ability to make the Royals semi-readable is a true gift, the sort of thing every writer envies but few actually have. Today, Posnanski has an especially important, and perhaps unforeseen, Royals update: Manager Trey Hillman, wunderkind of the Japanese major leagues, has been a giant disappointment:
No, the troubling part is that all of those things that Dayton Moore and so many others saw in Hillman - his bustling energy, his likeable personality, his sense of perspective, his ability to inspire and motivate the players - those things have been missing in action. The Royals have played lackluster baseball. They have gone backward defensively. They are so unfocused that Hillman last week made a point to say they're catching pop-ups better. They have by far the worst plate discipline in all of baseball. The Royals' young players have not improved enough and in some case regressed. This is not a well-managed baseball team.Yeesh. As Posnanski mentions, that's not the Trey Hillman people saw in Japan -- the guy who looked like the perfect manager for the small-market, post-Moneyball era. Whether or not Hillman has responded to his team, or his team is responding to Hillman, or whether this matters at all is yet to be seen, but if stuff like this keeps coming from credible places like Posnanski, Hillman's days in Kansas City will be short-lived.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-08-2008 @ 8:09PM
Chris Troutman said...
we let him off the hook?
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9-09-2008 @ 12:52AM
petejayhawk said...
It's not that the Royals are underreported per se, it's that the Main Stream Medias have a pro-Pat Lackey bias.
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9-25-2008 @ 9:39PM
Chick Grachek said...
I have been a true Kansas City Royals fan since 1969. I have watched great Royals teams. Talk of changing the Royals' manager needs does not make sense. Please consider looking deeper into Royals ownership and executive management for causes.
Trey Hillman isn't the problem. Trey is developing the players that the Royals invest in. The Kansas City Royals have not invested in a winning ball club since Mr. Kauffman was alive. What do you expect? Trey Hillman has worked very hard this season to develop his young talent. The Royals need to spend the money to sign and build another World Series contending team. It is so easy to focus on the manager. Look a little closer to find the real reasons to this problem. Take a look at how the Royals built its championship teams in the 70s and 80s. The key to the Royals' success was John Schuerholz. John built the Royals and he has put together a winning Atlanta Braves club as well. I lived near Atlanta before John Schuerholz arrived and the Braves were terrible. I went to a ball game where I witnessed a Montreal pitcher hit the cycle off Braves' pitching. Listen please, build a foundation from superior general management. Build the talent in the farm club system, and invest in a winning contender. Trey reminds me of Dick Howser. Dick Howser; however, worked with great talent and brought in tremendous veteran pitchers and leadership to earn a World Series championship. If the Royals can find a general manager with the leadership and vision to build a contender, then I will examine field management performance and records. Changing managers every year does absolutely nothing for the Kansas City Royals. Quit using the manager as a cause for a bigger problem.
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