The past 3 years have been incredibly frustrating for Royals fans, to say the least.

After a non-competitive decade hallmarked by a lack of investment in player development fans had seen their franchise-once a template for a successful operation-reduced to little more than a AAAA farm club for real big league teams.

In 2006 Owner David Glass hired an up-and-coming executive named Dayton Moore as the GM and hope abounded in Royals Nation.  Fans recognized the move as a sign that Glass was serious about being competitive.

That competitiveness has failed to materialize so far in the Dayton Moore Era and the fan base is justifiably confused and infuriated at the lack of progress after two-plus seasons.

Let’s start with one premise:  that Dayton Moore knows more about baseball than any of us ever will.  Whether or not we agree with his judgment we should concede that his decisions are made with a knowledge of the game, teams, personalities and skillsets that we can’t hope to divine from from being outsiders.  That’s not a pass for mistakes; it’s a statement of fact.  A move that seems silly from an objective perspective can make sense from a more subjective one.  GMDM doesn’t operate in a vacuum where he can make every decision on the pure logic of win-loss cost-benefit analysis; he has his own constituencies to manage politically as well as an owner who may have more skepticism in the process than the fan base.

So rather than rehash the complaints about Moore, I’m going to try something different-I’m going to imagine a portion of Moore’s interview with Glass in the early summer of 2006 that led to his being named General Manager.  This is big on supposition but I believe events bear out much of what I’m intuiting and if close to accurate, may shed some light on some of GMDMs more bizarre statements: “trust the process” and “Hillman has a chance to be one of the very best baseball men in a generation.”

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The Royals had a chance to learn either attempt to be competitive late into the season in a year the the AL Central was in flux or learn more about the organization.

Instead we got neither.

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