What is the main thing that must change for the Royals to be successful?

The main thing has already been done.

They hired a new GM. That is the first step.

I feel your pain.

As a Tiger fan, I suffered through 2003.

Dave Dombrowski was hired as The Tiger's new President in 2001, and in 2002 fired Randy Smith as GM, and took over those duties.

Since then, he has re-stocked our farm system and made some good trades and signings.

You just have to keep the faith. These kind of things take 4-5 years to come together.

The Tigers did it, I know KC can do too!

Even though I am a huge Yankees fan, I believe that a salary cap is needed in the major leagues. It has certainly worked in football. No one team can buy all of the best players. So the talent pool is spread out more, which in turn makes for better games and puts more people in the stands (which creates revenue to pay for the players.) Otherwise teams such as the Royals will be stuck losing their best prospects to teams that can afford them. They are literally stuck with low players year after year with no way out. I don't think managers and coaches are going to make that much of a difference.

Pitching, pitching, pitching! It is hard to win games when you are last in ERA for the entire league by almost a full point. Plus, having an offense that scores the fewest runs doesn't help either. When you are getting out score (on average) by almost 3 runs a game, it is impossible to win.

What they need to do is spend some money and get a big time big name free agent pithcer. Someone who can make a difference and be the ace of the rotation. Then you a couple of veteran pitchers to compliment him unitl the younger guys mature. The biggest problem is that they don't have the money to get those top pitchers and when guys do become good they don't have to money to keep them. They need to fix a lot, but that is the best way to go.

Pitching - Get Elarton out of the rotation. I'm sorry but 1-8 with a 5.24 is unacceptable. He's only ever had one "good" year and even then his ERA was almost 5. Bring back Etherton from AAA. Give him another chance.

Batting - You NEED to get runners in. They need to pick up a guy who's going to hit 25-30 home runs and knock in 70-80 runs. They don't have that. They need to send people to the plate who are going to get the runners over. Bring up Alex Gordon in August and see what he's worth.

Fielding - Yeah, well. It's been ugly. But it could be worse.

*sigh*

Since we can't fire the owner the one thing that needs to be done has already been done. We hired a new GM who is considered by everyone in basball to be the best new GM in the game. He will get real talent in our minor leagues as opposed to what we have now. It will take a couple of years so prepare to suffer for at least one more horrible season

The new GM, if he really has all the control he says he will, must gut the entire organization, starting with the Glass kid. He's been a cause of many problems within the organization. Nepotism is never good.

Management willing to open their checkbooks freely is required. However, in a small-mid market, that would almost surely be a money losing proposition. At least you have memories to fall back on of glory days--I'm a Devil Rays fan and we've finished in last place 8 times and next to last place once!

Somehow find 100 million extra dollars a year to throw at big name players so they can compete with big market teams.

They need to work as a team. If you do not work as a team WInning a game is hard to come.

New Ownership