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00:00And let's talk about the Royals here because they have been way better at home.
00:04If you're looking for any, any bit of hope at this point,
00:08they have been a much different team at home for whatever reason on the road.
00:11They're seven and 16.
00:12They just finished up a road trip where they were one in five.
00:15They salvaged one in St.
00:17Louis against the Cardinals.
00:18And we started the show time out back with Trello a lot because the light up
00:21and the ongoing frustration from fans.
00:23And I told you,
00:24I kind of hit a boiling point over the weekend based off of Sunday where it
00:28was a writing and they still had a reason why Jack Caglione wasn't in the lineup.
00:32To me, it's just unacceptable.
00:33It doesn't make any sense.
00:35Fast forward to this conversation.
00:39I want to focus it more on the front office and maybe even ownership a little bit.
00:43As much as we talk about Matt Quattrero and he's in the crosshairs of Royals fans.
00:46And I,
00:47there's not many Royals fans that I've run into over the last week or two that
00:50aren't immediately pointing the finger at him.
00:52Okay.
00:52Yeah.
00:53He's been a, he's, he is the person in everyone's crosshairs.
00:57How much of this is on the front office and JJ Piccolo?
01:00How much of this is on John Sherman?
01:01I, if we were to divvy it up, I actually think, look, when you're the owner of the
01:05team, you're always going to have some blame.
01:06Okay.
01:07But I actually don't think this is as simple as well.
01:09If they would have been given an extra $20 million in the off season,
01:11this would all be soft.
01:12I don't think so.
01:13Based on the names that they were linked to and the realistic market you could be
01:17in.
01:17Yes.
01:18In this dream scenario, I would have loved for John Sherman to say, you know what?
01:21Do whatever it takes to get Alex pregnant, but let's live in reality for a little
01:24bit.
01:25That was never going to happen for any club in the American league central either.
01:28Okay.
01:28So that I don't, that's why I actually don't put much of the blame on ownership right
01:33now.
01:33It's, it's on Q and it's on JJ Piccolo and the front office where we all know the
01:38players have to perform, but we're talking right now, just about these two individuals,
01:42the front office and Matt Quattrero.
01:44And yeah, I think the front office, of course, shoulders a lot of the blame Cody, because
01:47their plan in large part was banking on Salvador Perez and Vinny Pasquantino as their three
01:53and four hitters being key cogs.
01:55And you can say like, well, of course they were.
01:57And I get it.
01:57Like, I understood that's what they thought, but the results have to be there and they're
02:01not.
02:01And as much as the lineup is Q, you and I both know in baseball in 2026 and really
02:07for the last eight years, 10 years, a lot of that is still in conjunction with the front
02:11office.
02:12So yes, Q is making the lineup per se, but the people who are employed to help make
02:17line, but Jack Caglio, not being in the lineup, even against a righty or Salvador Perez still
02:22batting where he is and not sixth.
02:24That's not just a Q decision.
02:25That is also a front office decision.
02:27So I'm a little bit torn.
02:28I think there's probably a little bit of both.
02:30I think anybody who thinks all of this is because Sherman is cheap is just like the old
02:35battle cry of fandom that exists.
02:38Now I'm not saying it can't be true.
02:39We saw Eric Cosmer in a relatively serious interview over the weekend.
02:44Talk about how he had a done deal with the Royals.
02:46He thought, and then David glass came in and said, nah, five years.
02:49That was David glass.
02:50That's my point.
02:51I mean, John Sherman has done the opposite so far.
02:53I'm just saying like, you know, from a management and that would take place.
02:55No, up to this point, he's paid Salvador Perez.
02:58He's paid Bobby with junior.
02:59He gave Vinny a couple of years of control.
03:01They paid Seth Lugo for the most part.
03:04They have paid the people they have wanted to pay.
03:06They have not been active in free agency.
03:07And I would say part of this, I would say it is more front office than ownership at
03:11the moment.
03:12And the reason why is they have not done enough to infuse around the talent that worked.
03:17They were in a bad spot.
03:18I'm not pretending like they weren't because part of the issue they have is they don't
03:22have anybody who was drafted from 18 to 21 other than Bobby wood jr.
03:27Who's on the roster.
03:28That's the Dayton Moore era.
03:30Oh, I'm sorry.
03:31Lynch.
03:32And you know, let me add one more, but core didn't work out.
03:36Singer's already gone.
03:37Now, look, that was a JJ decision.
03:39And that train, of course, did not work out.
03:41It did not.
03:41It was a disaster.
03:42But the problem is Singer wouldn't have solved their problems either.
03:45Nick Lofton was their first round pick.
03:47Asa Lacey.
03:48Now, again, that's Dayton.
03:49So Nick Lofton's a viable player.
03:52Asa Lacey's bad.
03:53Mazzucato, bad.
03:54Gavin Cross doesn't matter.
03:57So like these guys that are finally coming around, that's front office stuff.
04:01You are in charge of the draft.
04:02You got to get star players in here.
04:04And when guys like Jack Caglione get up, they got to be successful.
04:07So I definitely think there's a part of it.
04:08The problem is their last couple of moves.
04:12If you did them in retrospect, would you do them?
04:14In retrospect, would you trade Seth Lugo or pay him?
04:17And I think that there's a good argument for maybe you would have let him walk.
04:22In retrospect, would you have traded Brady Singer for Jonathan India?
04:25No.
04:26Hell no.
04:26Not even a little.
04:28Right?
04:28And so they got to make those kinds of decisions.
04:30Would you have given Salvador Perez more money to keep him here even longer?
04:34And look, that's different.
04:35The Salvador Perez thing, though, is more complicated.
04:36Because I think it's not so much that they brought him back, but it's when you decided
04:40to bring him back, what did you promise him and what his role is going to be?
04:46Versus, hey, we got to use you in a way to make a team successful.
04:48It's not so much that it was a mistake to bring Salvador Perez back.
04:51I get why they brought him back.
04:53I would have brought him back.
04:54I don't have an issue with that.
04:55But was there a conversation that took place about his role, his playing time, even so far
05:01as just overall the ability?
05:03Hey, look, if it's not there, we might need to move you down in the lineup.
05:07These kind of things, without him all of a sudden having a big issue with it and it causing
05:11a huge storm for 24 hours because he's told he needs a mental break.
05:15You know, so that's part of it.
05:18That needed to be addressed during those negotiations on top of just the financial end of it.
05:24Yeah, the Seth Lugo one was one where everybody was mixed on last year.
05:27Look, I'm not going to flip it.
05:28At the time, I had no problem with Seth Lugo signing an extension.
05:31And so, and I would have done the same thing, but it's a results-based business.
05:35And there, a lot of their plan, I've said it a few times.
05:38A lot of their plan was that the guys that had great years last year, we're going to
05:41have great years again.
05:42And then everybody that kind of struggled, they'll figure it out.
05:46And that goes back to my whole Alex Zumwalt and the hitting staff thing.
05:49And here we are.
05:50And in large part with runners in scoring position, base running is still just as bad as it was
05:55last year.
05:55There hasn't been improvement there.
05:57The biggest area of improvement, I actually would argue, ironically enough, as we've talked
06:01about Cags not being in the lineup, I actually think Cags defensively has gotten way better
06:04as a baseball player in right field.
06:05Very much so.
06:05And I guess this goes back to like the front office part where like, I'm still kind of
06:10torn in this in the sense that it's not like they, like, I don't go back and say they
06:14shouldn't have moved on from Dayton because JJ, and I still give him credit for this, did
06:19stabilize them when they were in a bad rut.
06:22But your job is not just to stabilize, but to take a step forward.
06:27And so like in normal Royals history, back-to-back seasons of 86 and 82 wins, those are not like
06:32shameful seasons.
06:34You made the playoffs one of those years.
06:35Ideally, you'd have been a few games better the following year and been a playoff team
06:39each of the last two.
06:40Can I again point out that the Royals have only, other than the, let's say two years
06:43ago when they made the playoffs, they'd only made the playoffs two times since 1986 up to
06:49that point, they made a two-year run.
06:51They had Dayton Moore in charge for, I don't know, a billion years and made the playoffs
06:56two times, won the world series.
06:57He gets credit for that.
06:58But since JJ has been the GM, which is a total of now, I think five years because he took
07:03over in, he was through 2021.
07:05So he took over in 2022.
07:07So five full years, including this one, they were 74, 65 wins.
07:11Pretty bad, right?
07:12No doubt about it.
07:13And then 56 wins.
07:14Oh, I'm sorry.
07:15No, it was 65, then 56, 74 was still Dayton, then 86, 82.
07:20And we'll see this year.
07:21They stabilize in a good way.
07:23JJ deserves credit for that.
07:24They were a bad franchise and he didn't get to save it with like a bunch of Dayton picks
07:28other than Bobby with junior.
07:30Cause it was like a litany of busts.
07:32And so like he had to at least stabilize or an issue.
07:35But I think the worry though, step forward is the part that I'm like, can you get, can
07:38you get past that?
07:38Can you get to the hump part?
07:40The worry is though, of course they have, they've made, they have of course set this off.
07:43Well, this, this is the core group.
07:44Like this is the core group.
07:45It's going to have to get it done.
07:47And that's all you got right now, because as you've pointed out with the minors, a few
07:50times in the minor league, it's not as if they have a bunch of prospects in triple a
07:54ready to come up.
07:55They are down in a ball and double a.
07:57And so this core, this, this is the group.
07:59I mean, this is, this is how they've positioned.
08:01They've put all their eggs in the basket of, of course, we're going to, you know, we're
08:04going to do everything possible to keep Bobby with junior here.
08:06We're going to take care of Vinny in the short term.
08:08If we need to, we're going to continue to bring back Salvador Perez.
08:11We're going to extend Michael Garcia.
08:13We're going to, as you pointed out, Seth Lugo, we're going to, we're going to give him
08:16a contract.
08:17Michael Walker is going to come back there.
08:19We all know what the plan is right now.
08:21The plan though is not producing the results that are necessary in a year where the expectations
08:27are them to not only be a playoff team, frankly, although now I think people would just take
08:30that at some extent, but the expectation was to win the division.
08:33Is it weird that like, and you and I have said that they're not going to do anything fast.
08:35And I'm still pretty sure that it's not at any point going to happen this year.
08:40Had they lost that game yesterday?
08:41I think there'd have been like a 25% chance we'd have come in here on Monday and said
08:44no Q.
08:45Like there would have not been Q.
08:46Not we would have called for it, but that the ownership would have been like, what are
08:49we going to do here?
08:50See, I think somebody else will be, I think somebody else would lose their job before they
08:55went to that extent.
08:56I thought if they had lost yesterday, someone was losing their job on Monday.
08:59I don't know who, but it just felt like it was barreling towards that.
09:02At some point, at some point it will cost somebody their job if they don't get this thing
09:05corrected pretty quick.
09:06I don't think it'll be Q right away.
09:09If that, if we get to that level for a couple of reasons, one, I think they're, Hey, they
09:13have shown just as an organization, they're extremely patient.
09:16You want to call it too loyal, whatever, but they're patient.
09:18And then also he did sign a three-year extension just like four months ago, six months ago.
09:22Now that doesn't guarantee that you got to stick around for three years.
09:24I'm just saying that by, so, you know, I think if this homestand, it turns out to be
09:31a disaster, which I actually don't think it's going to be.
09:33They've been better at home for whatever reason, and the Red Sox and Astros both are
09:36playing bad baseball, you know, depending on what the rest of the month ends up.
09:40I think it really depends, Cody.
09:41If you're asking like, would we see somebody out the door?
09:44Let's see how the final two weeks, a week and a half in the month of May, if it's June
09:48one and this team is in a worse spot record wise, and they are already right now.
09:53And therefore the distance atop the division gets tougher and they're still in last place.
09:58Then, then somebody's, I don't know who, I think I have a decent idea who would be
10:01first, but somebody at that point in time would have to, to, I think, answer for it.
10:05And the, the fan, the one tough thing I will say for Q and I've, I've said this over and
10:09over.
10:09I, I got plenty of issues with the way they've been handling things recently.
10:12I don't think it is as, as big of an impact as we sometimes make it out to be.
10:17Like if, if Matt Quattrero was not the manager and they had the best manager of all time
10:20managing this team, I don't think suddenly they would be five games above 500, but I also
10:25think they might have a couple more wins.
10:26Like there, there's that balance.
10:28And I think sometimes when we talk about Matt Quattrero and social media talks about him,
10:31it's as if that he has cost them like 10 wins this year.
10:34And that's not the case.
10:35He's not worth 10 wins.
10:36Okay.
10:36No managers worth 10 wins.
10:37This is 25% of the way through the season.
10:40You can also be the greatest manager of all time.
10:42That's what I'm saying.
10:42You could plug in whoever you consider in your baseball history, the best manager ever.
10:47This team would not suddenly have 12 more wins, but I think there's a couple of days.
10:53I think I could find three.
10:54I think I could find three and when you're already in the spot, three is a big deal.
10:58I, I do think it's fairly obvious.
10:59Like we talk about team makeup.
11:01One thing that is, I think readily apparent having watched this core group of guys for
11:07three straight years, a playoff team, a near playoff team.
11:09And now this bad start where there are seven games under 500.
11:13They do.
11:14And this is the part where I would be the most critical of Q, not the lineups or the bullpen
11:18or anything else.
11:19They seem to wear their emotions on their sleeve when things are going bad and don't
11:24know how to get out of it.
11:25Yeah.
11:25They were flat on Saturday.
11:26Just flat as can be on Saturday.
11:28They don't like as a group, not as like one individual or this, they get in their heads.
11:33They all press as a group and they don't know how to get out of it sometimes.
11:36And I would say that that's probably the single thing I'd say, Q, you got to like, you got
11:40to get these guys on board together.
11:42You got to get anybody like riding a similar emotional wave or being even in balance, not
11:48just talking about it, but actually like performing in that capacity.
11:50And so that part of it still, I guess, interest me at least on that end.
11:54So I don't know.
11:55We'll keep an eye out on it.
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