Evolution of a Champion

The Royals were swept in Anaheim earlier this week. It did not feel good, not good at all. The games against the Angels were not particularly well played by the boys in blue, and, while it is not reason for panic, it is certainly a reason to be annoyed. After all, those three losses caused the Royals to fall to 12-9 on the year.

Not long ago, how much would you have given for the Kansas City Royals to be 12-9 or, for that matter, win 12 of 21 at any point in a season? To quote The Talking Heads, “How did I get here?”

With all the recent success – three straight winning seasons, two American League Championships and a World Series trophy – it is easy to forget the days of Redman, Elarton, Berroa and Brown. Let’s just stroll backwards to the beginning of the Dayton Moore era and watch the roster evolve from a 100 loss joke to the very best team in baseball.

The team Moore inherited and the few years thereafter:

Just browsing those names may not quite do justice to how poor they played baseball as a team. The high water mark of this group was 75 wins and that came courtesy of a robust, but fluky 18-8 September in 2008. Remember when us loyal thousands (not twenty thousand, mind you, but thousands nonetheless) were sure, or at least hopeful, that 18-8 was the springboard to jump start of The Process?

It didn’t. Take in the next three years’ worth of Royals and remember, my friends, that the 2009 Royals lost 97 games and did so WITH the best pitcher in baseball leading their staff.

Oh my! From possibly one of the more dismal teams of the era to the 2011 squad which, despite losing 91 games, gave us hope…or at least excitement. We had ourselves the new and improved Alex Gordon, the beginning of the highly touted best minor league system in the game and, my God, Cabrera and Francoeur were insanely productive!  Of course, there was the pitching….you think the current Royals’ rotation is troublesome? How’d remembering the top five starters from 2011 work out? Although, it should be noted that just a few games shy of making the bullpen list was a man named Greg Holland, who only struck out 74 batters in 60 innings. Oh, and a kid named Salvador Perez caught 39 games that season too.

As we move on, it is something of a distant memory that the 2012 Royals still lost 90 games. Although the names were quite familiar, they were not quite THE guys, yet.

OH! That’s how the 2012 team lost 90 games! Yet, just a few changes and a lot of development and you have a championship team.

You live through The Process and one kind of forgets what it looks like sometimes. The dominant bullpen was frankly, the very first piece to fall into place. Sure, we joke about ‘All Star’ Aaron Crow, but he was pretty good and so was Tim Collins. They were there in 2012 and 2013, locking down the back end of games before any of knew that HDH would become a thing.

The lineup? One of my partners, a good sports guy but casual Royals’ fan, commented that “as good as those guys are now, they used to be bad.” That might be an oversimplification, but it is not far from the truth. That lineup, with its rotating right fielders and helped by half a season of Ben Zobrist, was not so much made, but evolved into a nine that went to back-to-back World Series.

The formula, however unique, seems so simple now. And it still looks smart…even after losing three straight on the road.