Other Fish
No, this isn’t a post about the Marlins.
Fans of the Kansas City Royals, it’s time to move on. It is one thing for your GM to routinely make shockingly bad decisions and then tell you to “trust the process”. But when ownership becomes even more haphazard about handing out stupid contracts, then it’s time to find a new drug. The glory days are long gone and aren’t coming back. The only joy Royals’ fans now have is being able to watch Zack Greinke take the mound every fifth day. It’s time to end this unhealthy relationship and move on. There are plenty of good suitors out there, and face it, you deserve better than this.
I’m not going to suggest that Royal fans jump on the Yankees or Red Sox bandwagon, or any large market team for that matter. Nor will I be discourteous enough to suggest that Royal fans look across the state. Here are just a few smaller market teams I’d submit for your consideration —
Tampa Bay Rays
General Manager Andrew Friedman has taken a perennial basement dweller and made them into a fit contender, while adhering to a strict budget. In other words, Friedman has been everything Royals fans hoped Dayton Moore would be. Unlike the Royals, the Rays draft extremely well; their farm system depth is enviable. Also unlike the Royals: the Rays are adept at developing their own players. *Cough* Alex Gordon… Friedman and his crew evaluate players correctly and are second to none and when it comes to finding freely available talent and making it work. Friedman is the anti-Dayton. There’s still plenty of room on this bandwagon.
Texas Rangers
The Rangers were expected to contend in 2010, not this year. They have a solid nucleus of young talent in Ian Kinsler, Elvis Andrus, Derek Holland, Neftali Feliz and Julio Borbon. The Rangers have also got the most out of an inexperienced pitching staff by complimenting them with one of the finest defenses in the league. The Rangers should continue to improve from within, as they boast one of the better farm systems in baseball even after graduating many of their system’s best talents this year. GM Jon Daniels has had his share of biffs when it comes to making trades (Adrian Gonzalez, anyone?), but he’s also had some major coups, like take for instance the Teixeira deal.
Seattle Mariners
Yes, I know it would be a bitter pill to swallow, rooting for the team that dumped Yuniesky Betancourt on you, but it is moves like that should encourage you to pull for the Mariners. They show they know how to properly evaluate their own players and dump bad contracts from the previous regime. (See also: Washburn, Jarrod) Mariner fans can feel your pain after having to deal with years of Bill Bavasi. As one of big contributors to the homegrown talent in the Brewers organization, Jack Zduriencik has an eye for talent. He’s also been a master at acquiring undervalued talent and spinning them into gold, as demonstrated in picking up players like Franklin Gutierrez, David Aardsma or Russell Branyan either via trade or free agency. Looking at some of his other under-the-radar moves, it’s obvious that he values defense. With his dealings, in just one year the Mariners went from a 37% winning percentage to a team above .500. He has Tom Tango on his payroll, and if you needed a couple of other reasons to hop on the Seattle bandwagon, there’s Ichiro and Felix Hernandez.
There are plenty of other fish in the sea, Royals fans. Why stay?
Erik Manning is the founder of Future Redbirds and covers the Cardinals for Heater Magazine. You can get more of his analysis and rantings in bite-sized bits by following him on twitter.
Reason to stay: same reason any fan ever does, regionalism.
It’s hard to “force” fandom, especially given the weirdness of it; cheer a guy one year, boo him the next.
I say that now is the perfect time to get on the O’s bandwagon.
Agreed. Plenty of room, and absolutely no danger of being called a front runner. Plus, you get to hate the Yankees and Red Sox!
That’s rarely a stretch as it is.
I feel like you should have included at least one NL option, Dave. I just think if I was a fan in a Royals fan’s position, it’d be easier to make the transition into a whole new league then try to find an AL team to root for.
Erik Manning wrote this.
Ha, my bad, I guess I didn’t even look at the author and just assumed it was Dave.
i think Batancourt’s defense is well. UZR? what’s this?
This article is probably half foot-in-mouth, but to the extent that it’s even a little bit serious, it brings up some interesting questions about the nature of devotion. As a Sox fan since ’95 (born in ’85), I’ve never really had to face this kind of question. I am a Sox fan because I live in New England and I was born into a RI family of Sox fans – not because they were good when I started rooting (although they did win the division in ’95). In fact, they weren’t anything special. Most playoff appearances from ’95 until ’03 led to them getting blown out of the water; they had a godawful farm system; management (I still hate Dan Duquette) was awful; and of course, I inherited the expectation that every year, even if the team started out hot, the late-summer swoon was inevitable.
Still, I loved baseball; I loved Mo Vaughn and John Valentin and Tim Naehring and Troy O’Leary and I even liked Darren Lewis a little; I loved Fenway; I loved hating the late-’90s Yankees; and most importantly, I never saw rooting for any other team as a remote possibility. So, even though I abhorred Duquette, his bad drafting and disasterous people skills and even though the team made me throw my remote through my television, I never would have abandoned that loyalty even if Theo/Henry/’04/pink hats had never come along. Would I have run the team differently? Yea, but part of being a fan is that, even though management and ownership would have you believe that you’re an integral part of the system, you don’t have any say when the contracts are handed out; you really are just a spectator.
In baseball it’s especially frustrating when we can clearly see that a douchecan like Dayton Moore is (purposefully?) ignoring the many advanced methods of player analysis at his disposal (it’s hard to believe he will be a GM 10 years after the publication of Moneyball). I really think, however, that eventually all teams will have to give in to and take advantage of the inevitability of sabermetrics’ role in the front office (most already have). At that point it will just become a race to the cutting edge (again, in some cases it already is). The Brian Sabeans and Dayton Moores of the baseball world are a dying breed.
Until then, fans of bad teams should stick it out. There’s no reward for saying in 2009, “Ooh, BA ranks the Rangers as having the best farm system, plus I think Ian Kinsler is cute!,” buying a Josh Hamilton biography, and watching the Rangers go the playoffs for the next 4 years.
Gawd Red Sox fans are annoying.
Little bitter that your team’s sustainance is 18 games a year of Beantown and Yankee juice?
Someone’s butthurt about the Rangers whooping their team of choice this year.
As a Rangers fan, I have greatly enjoyed this season. The farm system makes me giddy since we have no money for free agency anymore. Elvis, Feliz, Holland and Borbon are just the beginning, with others like Smoak, Max Ramirez, Moscoso, Kiker and Beaven possibly coming up next year.
Nice article overall, though I don’t think Royals fans should move on. Stick with your team. But a second favorite team never hurts anyone.
Butthurt? I mean, assuming that’s English, I guess the logical response to that would be, “scoreboard.”
But in all honesty, I just picked one of the teams that Erik mentioned and reasoned why it would not be rewarding to follow them… because they are ALREADY good (or positioned to be good in the future, or managed promisingly, etc.). Not as bandwagon-y as the Yankees or Sox or Angels, but not far off.
There’s no reward for that? Sure there is. You get to watch the team you’ve chosen to follow go to the playoffs (and maybe win it all). You get to watch a quality baseball team, instead of watching a terrible one that figures to continue being terrible. You may not think that reward is worth it, but there IS a reward for getting on a bandwagon.
Everyone knows the rewards of sticking it out: you get to claim that you’re a TRUE FAN and loudly proclaim your loyalty. And if/when they finally (by luck or design) win it all, you can go nuts. That’s great. I know a lot of Red Sox fans and I know how happy they were in 2004 (and, to a lesser extent, 2007). But damn, at least the pre-championship Red Sox fielded good teams. They won more than they lost and made the playoffs repeatedly in a tough division. That’s not a poorly managed team, even if it wasn’t necessarily the BEST one either (the Duquette years, which by the way included trading for or developing a number of other elite players like Pedro and Nomar). It’s really no comparison. The Royals are hamstrung completely by a combo of a small market and a downright awful owner.
routinely going to the playoffs and getting blown out is a far cry different than losing 90-100 games a season every year. Sorry your not and will never be the noble hero that is a Royals or Pirates fan.
Yea, you’re right. The Pirates suck. Give up on them, move east, and buy a Chase Utley jersey. Problem solved.
Please investigate the difference between “tongue-in-cheek” and “foot-in-mouth.” There is a distinction there.
Exactly. Phillies fans stuck through the years of Ed Wade & mediocrity, and finally won something. It’s worth it, even though the process isn’t always pleasant.
While I’m sure this article is mostly tongue-in-cheek, as a Twins fan, I actually pondered this issue during the attempted contraction debacle. I could never really come to grips with the possibility of rooting for another team.
The situation is tragic for Royals fans because Moore was a hot commodity when hired, but turned into a pumpkin– and now he gets rewarded.
As an O’s fan who numerous times resisted the tempatation to bail on the pr-MacPhail Birds, I encourage you to stick it out as a fan. Sure Dayton Moore’s contract was extended, but it is not unheard of for GM’s to get canned. It may take an Erik Bedard type boondoggle to finally open the eyes of the ownership, but there is always hope that it could happen. When it does happen and the team gets a Jack Z or Andy MacPhail, you don’t want to look like a bandwagon hopper. In the meantime, if you must root for a respectable team, find one that rarely plays yours. An NL team will probably work best. Colorado is exciting and their management seems to know what they are doing. Don’t buy the gear of your surrogate team and never root for them over the Royals, but otherwise enjoy them. Then when KC is good again, you can go back to them without compromising yourself as a fan.
“but it is not unheard of for GM’s to get canned”
Ha, this brings up an interesting point. If you’re a Royals fan, do you actively root against your team and root for terrible FO decisions to get Moore out as quickly as possible? Or do you act like a good fan and just take the pain for that much longer, knowing the day Moore leaves is inevitable, even if it doesn’t come nearly as quickly as you’d like…?
Much like being a Mariners fan during the Bill Bavasi era…
Imagine if he didn’t trade for jacobs/crisp/betancourt! 20 year extension? keys to the city?
I’m sorry, but “Greinke” doesn’t spell “Halladay” correctly, and I’ve heard a lot of nick names for JP our smooth pimp, but I’ve never heard him called Dayton before. Weird.
Still, you’re point about staying is true. You left out corporate owners funnelling team revenue into the cable provider division though. The picture for Jays fans is worse than presented in your description.
The Rangers play in the 4th largest metro area. They are not a “small market team”.
“Small market team” does not just mean metro area. Sure, there’s a lot of people in the Dallas area, but how many of them watch Rangers baseball? How many of them have been twiddling their thumbs all summer, waiting for the chance to ask HOW BOUT DEM COWBOYS?
Another example: Baltimore is a gigantic metro area, and a huge market. They’re still a small market team.
Baltimore? The team that used to lead/nearly lead the league in attendance only 10 years ago? The city with no basketball or hockey team? Up until a series of terrible front-office spending moves, this was a free-spending franchise, and likely will be again if they start winning – they won’t be pulling a Tampa (hope to win before everyone is too expensive), they’ll resign everyone they can. Baltimore is only a small market in the context of their division.
So because the Rangers are bad at marketing their product, that makes them “small market”? While I agree with others that a city’s wealth, density, topography and maybe even competition from other professional teams should be considered, the population of a metro area is/should be the biggest determinant of whether a team is in a small market or not.
Just look at the Indians and Orioles when they opened their stadiums and put a good team on the field, they sold out their games and were considered “big market” teams. Now because they fail to attract crowds they’re considered small market? That’s silly. They were both simply small market teams that managed to build stadiums, put together a good team and attract large crowds. That doesn’t change the fact that they always were and always will be small market teams. Just as the fact that Dallas fails to attract large crowds due to poor management does not make them a small market team.
Team mismanagement should never be allowed to excuse a team for failure and then place blame on being in a “small market”. Dallas may be poor, spread out and competing with the Cowboys but they’re in the 4th largest metro area and thus can NEVER be considered small market.
Now there’s something that always had me wondering and that could be a good topic for an article: “teams markets”.
Doing a brief Wikipedia search I got this:
New York (2 teams) – 19M (let’s split it evenly and call it 9.5M each)
Los Angeles (2 teams) – 12.8M (6.4 each)
Chicago (2 teams) – 9.5M (4.75 each)
Dallas – 6.3
Philadelphia – 5.8
Houston – 5.7
Miami – 5.4
Atlanta – 5.3
Washington – 5.3
Boston – 4.5
Detroit – 4.4 (not counting Ontario numbers)
Phoenix – 4.4
San Francisco (2 teams) – 4.2 (2.1 each)
So how do this teams call themselves “small market teams” and cry poverty against teams from much smaller markets? The Tigers, Giants and Red Sox in particular would seem to be in a disadvantage against the Rangers, Astros, Marlins (cheap owner I know), Braves or the Nationals when comparing each team payroll with the market they play in.
You forget that the wealth of the citizens of the city is a bigger factor than pure population. A city with 10 million migrant workers is not selling many expensive luxury boxes, while a small rich city may. Plus The population of the city core has little to do with the baseball fan base for TV and overall revenue purposes. These are often much larger. The Yankees can call nearly the entire state of NJ as their Fan base, and Boston gets nearly all of New England. Buffalo is full of Mets fans. The Cardinals get all of Arkansas and most of Western TN as rabid followers. Chattanooga TN has special city buses dedicated to taking residents to all Braves games,so you have to add Chattanooga and the area between as part of Atlanta. Etc.
The thing about the Dallas-Ft.Worth market is how spread out that population is. Media market wise, it could theoretically lead to increased revenue from television (assuming the Rangers could have a good team for a few years to build interest), but it’s hard for me to imagine them ever getting the crowds that the Yankees or Dodgers do.
Part of the regionalism issue is that a lot of baseball fans in Texas are fans of their high school and college teams because they are 50-300 miles from their ‘home team.’
The Bay Area has a lot more than 4.2 million people to split between the Giants and the A’s, so I’m not sure where that number came from. Wikipedia has the estimated Bay Area population at around 7.5 million. As others have mentioned, that also doesn’t include the rest of Northern California they also get to buy merchandise, or watch tv or what not, and also doesn’t include any sort of wealth factor…
That’s because the Bay Area consists of two MSAs; SF/OAK and San Jose. He probably just didn’t include San Jose’s 1.8M because it is listed separately (all the way down at 31).
Regardless that leads to one team per 3.7M people and due to the SF Bay they are spread out more than other cities so they would only rank as around the 16th or so largest market.
I tried to leave once in 2003. I’m still being punished for that…
And I was wondering if somebody would point out that Dallas is not a small market.
You know… if you’re going to turn your back on your local team… why NOT root for the Yankees or Red Sox (or Angels, or Dodgers)? You’re gonna be called a traitor anyway, so you might as well decide to follow teams that put consistently good rosters on the field (though the Rays have obviously show some ability there, and the future looks better for the Mariners & Os than it did a year ago). In other words, if you’re going to quit on the Royals (not a bad idea, given what ownership just did), you might as well come on over to the dark side. Haven’t you suffered enough? 😉
Or you could just be a fan of the game and follow certain players, not teams. It’s not my thing, but people do it.
I personally would rather poke my eye out than root for the Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, and to lessor extent the Mets, Dodgers, Angels, or Cubs.
do you also poke your eyes out while rooting for perpetually losing teams?
“You know… if you’re going to turn your back on your local team… why NOT root for the Yankees or Red Sox (or Angels, or Dodgers)? You’re gonna be called a traitor anyway, so you might as well decide to follow teams that put consistently good rosters on the field…”
Because rooting for the Yankees or Red Sox or Angels or Dodgers is trite, too easy, and boring. I don’t care to be boring. As far as I’m concerned, you only have a right to root for those teams if you live there or once lived there.
If you say so. I don’t find it boring at all. Hate them all you want, but trust me when I say that Yankees-Sox (with the Rays in the mix now too) is not boring, year after year, when you have a rooting interest (instead of hating them all from afar).
The other argument you make is different: it’s geographical. That one makes sense to me.
While I’m sure this article is mostly tongue-in-cheek, as a Twins fan, I actually pondered this issue during the attempted contraction debacle. I could never really come to grips with the possibility of rooting for another team.