KC inks Francoeur, Melky

[A.E]

Royals add two more on-base machines​

In the space of 24 lovely hours, the Royals have signed both Jeff Francoeur and Melky Cabrera.

This year, the American League's on-base percentage was .327. That figure is actually a little misleading, because it includes pitchers hitting in interleague road games. But we'll stick with .327 because it's close enough for our purposes.

By my count, before this week Dayton Moore had acquired 15 players who were expected to play significant roles for the Royals and had significant track records as major leaguers.

Here are their career on-base percentages before joining the Royals: .343, .304, .325, .275, .272, .302, .318, .322, .331, .369, .340, .324, .323, .361, .311.

This is generous. That .369 is Jason Kendall's, most of which was gained when he could still hit. His OBP was .320 in the three seasons before Moore signed him to a two-year contract. With the exception of Gregor Blanco -- like Francoeur and Cabrera, an ex-Brave -- not a single one of Moore's favored hitters had demonstrated any particular ability to reach base.

Jeff Francoeur's career on-base percentage?

.310

Melky Cabrera's?

.328 (.319 over the last three seasons)

Dayton Moore seems to get amateur baseball players. The Royals have so many outstanding prospects in their farm system right now, you almost have to think that they actually know what they're doing.

It's not at all clear that Moore gets anything else. He certainly doesn't seem to get that the first necessary step in scoring runs is having runners.

After years of flailing among the league's OBP trailers, the Royals actually posted the league's eighth-best OBP last season. But that improvement was driven largely by Billy Butler and David DeJesus, both of whom were in the organization before Moore arrived. All Moore did was wind them up and let them play. Today, DeJesus is an Athletic and Butler's going to start getting expensive in a year or two.

Again, the farm system is stocked. But as the Rays have demonstrated, even with a well-stocked farm system you've still got to make a few canny trades and free-agent signings if you're going to reach the next level. And with the exception of Joakim Soria, along with (arguably) Alberto Callaspo and Bruce Chen, there simply aren't any examples of Dayton Moore knowing which professional players can help his club.

-ESPN