[duncan_idaho]

Good conversation here.

I think all of the following are true:

1. Dayton Moore deserves a tremendous amount of credit for building the scouting department, the development department, and convincing ownership to invest in paying big bucks in the draft and in Latin America. He also deserves credit for making moves to put the team over the top and win it when the window was open.

2. MLB chipped away at one of the Royals' big advantages - paying big money for guys drafted in later rounds to buy them out of college commitments - with the draft slotting. Limiting spending in Latin America also caused a tremendous issue as well.

And Moore and his staff never adjusted.

3. Moore's loyalty paid off in a big way (2013-2017 was a really good five-year run for KC), the cost him in a big way.

4. There was some luck involved in winning the World Series AND making another one. There's some luck involved in any championship (staying healthy; not facing an awful matchup; etc.). But the Royals being good in 2013-2017 was not a surprise to people in baseball, and it wasn't blind luck they made the playoffs and won some titles.

KC kind of lucked into having a dominant bullpen, but again, part of that was development (Holland and Herrera were developed and finished as relievers; Hochevar was re-worked; Davis was acquired with the idea he had upside as a starter but would be a great bullpen arm if nothing else) and part of it was Yost learning how to use that pen to his advantage.

Having great team speed, great team defense, and putting the ball in play were key focuses of the "plan," so that wasn't luck, either.

The only real "luck" factor was in how KC got outs from its pitching staff in the postseason (with a dominant back end and a just-good-enough SP corps).

5. The second half of Moore's tenure was a disaster from a draft and develop standpoint. They doubled down on lower percentage players for too long, and didn't stay at the cutting edge of finding market inefficiencies (too slow to use analytics/positioning data/pitch tunneling/etc.), and then tripled down on that by hiring the final coaching staff they did.

6. Moore is a really good person who was an awesome GM from 2007-2017 (and yes, I'll say the way he approached 2016 and 2017, keeping the core players together and trying to maximize around them rather than trading them off to supplement the next group of players was awesome in how anti-small-market it was), but he led a staff that failed drafting and developing guys from about 2011-12 and on, and it paid off in him being a pretty awful GM from 2018-22.

7. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing, but I'm glad the Royals were able to cash things in. It's hard for small markets to win a WS, as evidenced by the fact that even the smartest smaller markets are winless in the past 30 years, save for the Royals.