Let's make KC great again™

Look, I could start off by reiterating how bad the Royals are now. Or, I could give some rambling monologue about how long I've been a fan. Everyone is aware of the former, and I doubt that anybody cares about the latter. What I am bringing to the table today is a bold idea; an idea that doubles-down on the faith in our current farm system. Do you want to keep Whit around and have him play meaningful games? Do you want to see if we can accelerate The Process™ fast enough to ride Dozier's dominance into the next wave? Maybe you'd like to see Gordon be a meaningful cog, nay, a "veteran presence" during his twilight years? Do you want to see a potentially savvy move that hedges any extra money we may get from a/the new broadcast deal? I would imagine an answer to at least one of those questions is a solid **** yeah. Let's do it, then.

How do we address all of these issues in a proactive series of moves?

Let's promote everybody.

TNSTAAPP. There's no such thing as a pitching prospect. Even the best pitching prospects have a year or a level where they seemingly struggle. Pitchers rise and drop so much that it's not much of a surprise, and warrants caution with the glut we seemingly have between Lexington and NWA. Why not move them aggressively, though? Dare them to succeed at a higher level? They may be outliers, but look at Brad Keller. Keller went from a bad year at AA to a 2.6 fWAR, 140ip rookie campaign in KC after being selected in the Rule 5 draft. Look at Joakim Soria, who went from a 22yo in A-ball to being the heir apparent to Mariano Rivera in one season. How about Brandon Finnegan, FFS? Heck, look at Nate Adcock (I might lose you here) who jumped from high-A and was pretty serviceable in KC as a non-prospect who pitched once every two weeks. You are probably not going to destroy a pitcher by aggressively moving him up in the system.

Here's my pitch, if you'll pardon my pun: this trade deadline, gut the roster of any rental we can and bring up Staumont, Lovelady, Starling, Zimmer, O'Hearn, etc... and keep them up. They will learn on the fly up in KC or they wont. They need reps. I want to see Phillips, Newberry, Zimmer, Mejia, etc... This is a rebuild, ladies and gentlemen; we are seeing what we can use going into a forced implementation stage. We are not mollycoddling anyone unless there is a clear deficiency over a longer period of time than a month. You saw how we handled Moose? Yeah, you're getting me, here.

When that happens, we trade/release/demote JAGs down in NWA and Omaha and we get that starting pitcher logjam moving! Grrr, aggressive! I want to see the big 4 in Omaha by the end of the year, and I don't care if Singer currently has an ERA over 6 and a bad k/bb in 5 starts right now, let's move, people! We have enough seemingly decent pitching down on the farm to stagger call-ups to KC by next April. I'm serious. If some falter or clearly aren't catching on by then, option them down and it's the next man up. We have enough "talent" to stagger service time somewhat and spread out the Arb burn down the road and perhaps avoid the free-agency wave that we had on our last window. If nothing else, it'll be at least the same as bringing them up together as usual in 2-3 seasons, just sooner.

While that's going on, Dayton is going to go all Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan and get Melendez & Co. the **** outta Wilmington. It's a bad place for batters, period. At a certain point, I really don't care to figure out how bad it specifically is, I just believe that some of those next-wave guys have served their token minimum amount of time and it's off to NWA they go! We've got a window to cater to, people! Now, batters usually have more to work on than pitchers and I'm ok with a little special-snowflaking, but we've got to get this thing a-moving. Learn as you go. In the meantime, we do have some aforementioned position players to bide us over while the guys from Lexington and Wilmington march their way up.

This isn't necessarily unheard of in the sport, just with KC. Go ahead and check other organizations' MiL levels. You'll fairly frequently see batters with an OPS in the .600s get pushed up past a troublesome level after 40-50 games, and a decent number of them subsequently thrive. Have faith in the talent, Dayton. The jump to ML ball from AAA is a different animal than moving up from A+ to AA, and while a lot of players prove themselves to be 'tweeners between AAA and the Majors, getting our guys their reps in Wilmington and then moving them on to a much better league for hitters might be the best medicine - at least compared to just watching them stall out while batting .170 and waiting for them to beat the uncontrollable factors against them.

Really, we could see the Big 4 in early '20. Ideally in this scenario, I would want to see them given equal footing in competition for spots in Spring Training. Then, I want to see the guys in A+ and AA start coming up by September '20. This entire strategy will help KC in a number of ways.

1. We need to cut down on payroll. Having another '11 where we throw everyone to the wolves will pare down the team salary outside of Kennedy/Duffy, and would cut down on Dayton's seeming need to throw money at FA's on the downswing of their respective careers. Think internally, Dayton; we aren't winning jack for at least a couple of seasons anyway.

2. This would go very nicely with the (hopefully) increased revenue of a new broadcast deal. And how do we get more viewers watching Royals games? We bring up players and see what they can do. Who would perhaps excite you enough to get you tuning into a Royals game next June? Another Hamilton, or Starling? Another Duda, or O'Hearn? Another Bailey, or Kowar? I know my answers, at least.

3. Which leads to how do you get butts in seats? Same answer as above. You save money and you make money. Owner Daddy Warbucks should really like where this is going. He's seen it before in '11.

4. We get the struggles out of the way and we see what we've got and what needs to really be worked on. By the time Lee, Melendez, Hicklen, Pratto, etc... come up, maybe we'll have an established starting 5 and a set bullpen for them to gel with.

4.5. This helps with staggering of service time and could extend our next potential window, mainly due to salary juggling. We shouldn't forget that we are going to probably have another top-5 pick next June, and Dayton could do well to make moves as if he's going to nail that draft as well. With talent spread out as it would be in this plan, we could aim for a college guy to bring up in 1-2 seasons, or someone to pair with Witt on the back end of the line.

5. If this fails, Dayton gets to say that he's "done everything he can" to make this club successful. No matter what any mod or FanPost on RR floats out here, we're probably never going to sign a Machado-type guy to a $100m+ contract. We're not going to be able to build around a superstar unless said superstar came up with us (Gordon, Merrifield, Mondesi, etc...). Under that assumption, we have as good of a team right now as we're going to have for the rookies to come up and join with. If we wanted to, we could sign Gordon for a couple more years, just keep Merrifield and Duffy - and work them into building up and teaching these rooks to be ML players.

5.5. This happens under Ned Yost, who on our current timetable might retire before the next wave. Love him or hate him, his one skill above all others is that he's a players' manager. The guys seemingly dig him, or how else would you explain a generally business-as-usual attitude a season and a half deep into being one of the worst ball clubs in baseball? He might make weird lineups and he might not be able to manage a bullpen to our expectations, but he knows how to handle guys. This is mainly why we hired him in the first place. Instead of letting him ride off into the sunset, we give him reign over these guys being moved up early before he goes.

I could go on, though I think my point is made.

1. Get what you can out of our rentals at the deadline.

2. Move up Starling, Phillips, Mejia, Lovelady, Staumont, et al...

3. Shuffle JAGS around and get this line a-movin upwards, mostly regardless of stats.

4. Have an aggressive goal of starting to get these '17-'18 guys up to KC in '20 and force The Process closer to its endgame.

5. Start getting the young guys experience while we have actual non-bargain-bin "veteran presence" on the team and a manager that specializes in this stuff.

6. If it doesn't work, we will figure it out a lot sooner than we would if these guys are brought up later and we can start making moves in response.

Lets Make KC Great Again, guys.