Dayton Moore: Royals in ‘fine shape’; rotation must be more consistent

On an afternoon this week, in the far corner of the Royals clubhouse, Danny Duffy surveyed his options and mulled his next move on a giant-sized version of the game Jenga. A stack of wooden blocks had been set up on the carpet, and Duffy was facing off against third baseman Mike Moustakas. There were only few moves left. He inspected a corner piece. It looked a little loose.

This was Tuesday. The defending World Series champions sat at 18-19 in the standings after an early-season swoon, and as a group of teammates kept one eye on the Jenga showdown, the gentle sound of pop star Ed Sheeran played on a clubhouse speaker.

“People fall in love in mysterious ways, maybe just the touch of a hand.”

OK. If you are looking for signs of distress from the defending world champions, if you are looking for hints of anxiety or panic about a 20-20 record at the season’s quarter pole, you will not find it in this room, where the music often strays to 90s boy bands, an indoor putting target sits in the middle of the room, and the inhabitants carry scars from two straight trips to the World Series. In other words: If you are looking for any signs of cracks entering a weekend series at the first-place Chicago White Sox, you won’t find many at surface level.

“I think we still realize that we’re still due to get hot,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said, standing near his locker, “and we just realize how much time is left.”

Out on the field, away from the levity of the clubhouse, Royals general manager Dayton Moore stood on the top step of the dugout and waited to say hi to some old friends with the Boston Red Sox. Inside the dugout, three reporters formed a line to speak to the architect of the Royals, including one national reporter who was here to inspect the health of last year’s champions. In a moment, Moore turned around and saw the group waiting for him. He smiled.

“You just want the quotes now?” Moore called out, playfully. “We’re fine. We’re fine.”

Here are the defending world champions after the first 40 games of this season, here is the group that sprinted out to a 12-6 start, promptly lost 11 of 14 and now sits back at .500 after series victories over the Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox. They remain loose, even after the offense slumbered and the pitching wobbled during the first month of the season. They remain confident and steadfast, even as the skeptics and outsiders have wondered: What’s wrong with the Royals?

“I feel strong about where we are,” Moore said, taking on a more serious posture. “Certainly, I wish our record was a little better right now. But we’re in fine shape. We’ve got a lot of baseball left, and as long as we stay healthy and continue to play hard, we’ll be fine.”

Moore, of course, has long viewed the first 40 games of the season as a benchmark, an opportunity to take a deep breath and make a fairer evaluation of a team’s strengths and weaknesses. The evaluation is still incomplete, he says. This is baseball, after all, the judgment coming over 162 games, and for Moore, the process is daily.

Yet after 25 percent of the season, a few trends have emerged. The offense was sluggish for parts of April, and the struggles of designated hitter Kendrys Morales have been well documented. But for the Royals, the most pressing issue is rather obvious, something Moore brings up on his own.

“We haven’t been as consistent as we’re going to need to be in the rotation,” he said. “But we’ve got bright spots there, too. We’ve got some guys that have a chance to be very good for us, too.”

The numbers support the assessment. Entering a day off on Thursday, the Royals’ starting rotation had posted a 4.75 ERA in 212  1/3 innings. The ERA ranked 10th in the American League; the innings ranked second to last. The rotation question marks came to a head during a road series in New York, when the Royals lost three of four games and a pair of struggling starters (Chris Young and Kris Medlen) landed on the disabled list with arm issues.

In the days that followed, as the losing continued, Royals manager Ned Yost dismissed a query about his team’s energy and focus after two consecutive postseason runs. Instead, he offered a more raw assessment.

“We’re not pitching very well,” he said.

And yet, if the 2015 Royals showed baseball anything, it may have been that a championship can be had with mediocre starting pitching. A year ago, the Royals ranked 12th in the American League in starters’ ERA (4.34) and last in innings pitched (912  2/3 ). They still popped champagne on a cool November night in New York.

Still, Moore viewed the rotation as an area of need. So in the offseason, he set out to re-stock a unit that needed durability and consistency. The club signed free-agent Ian Kennedy to a five-year, $70 million deal. It re-signed Young, a postseason hero who posted a 3.06 ERA in 123  1/3 innings, to a two-year deal. It counted on the improvements of right-hander Yordano Ventura and Medlen, who had returned from a second Tommy John surgery in 2015.

Forty games in, the return on investment has been mixed. Kennedy is 4-3 with a 3.24 ERA and on pace to throw 200 innings, and Edinson Volquez has backed up his solid 2015 campaign with a steady 3.79 ERA in nine starts. But then there is Ventura, who has been haunted by an AL-leading 29 walks while posting a 4.85 ERA. And then there is Young (6.68 ERA) and Medlen (7.77), both on the 15-day disabled list, seeking to get healthy after frustrating stretches.

“I think we all know what we’re capable of,” Young said. “We all have high expectations; certainly we haven’t won as many games as we would have liked. Nobody said this was going to be easy. Nobody said they were going to roll out the red carpet for us and let us walk into the World Series.”

Every offseason, Moore stresses the importance of depth in the starting rotation. For now, the Royals are trudging on with right-hander Dillon Gee and left-hander Duffy. Gee, who began the season as the club’s long reliever, will make his second start tonight at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago. Duffy, who began the season in the bullpen, will start Saturday in the second game of the series.

Moore said he remains confident that Young and Medlen can be productive pitchers upon their return. The club is also counting on left-hander Mike Minor, a former Braves starter who could be available to join the Royals staff in early June. Minor is returning from a torn labrum in his left shoulder and could get an opportunity to offer the rotation a midseason boost.

“We’ll see,” Moore said. “We certainly believe he’s capable of doing that.”

The Royals also remain noncommittal on the future of Duffy, who spent most of 2014 and 2015 in the starting rotation before transitioning to the bullpen last September. If Duffy can re-capture his form from 2014, he could pitch his way into a more permanent spot in the rotation. Club officials, however, appeared to prefer Duffy in the bullpen when the season began.

“We went to the playoffs two years in a row with Danny in the rotation,” Moore said. “Danny has one of the better arms in the game, and the fact that he’s left-handed really separates him. It’s a highly positive thing. Danny, we believe, is at a level in his career, from an emotional and maturity standpoint, he’s capable of performing well in either role.”

For now, the outlook remains hazy. By early June, the Royals could have eight pitchers with an opportunity to log starts. Only one thing is certain: Nobody knows what the makeup of the rotation will look like in another 40 games.

“You know there’s going to be ups and downs with our team,” Moore said. “You always expect good things to happen, of course. But we also know you constantly have to make adjustments to your roster along the way. Every team does.

“I don’t know what that will be or if we’ll do anything, because I trust our group of players and there’s no reason to doubt them.”

Earlier this month, on a Friday in Cleveland, Yost echoed the sentiment during a brief closed-door pep talk with his players. The talk, Yost said, was less of a meeting and more of a reminder: Keep at it. Stay the course. The victories will come.

“Hey, I see you guys,” Yost told his players. “I see you busting your (rear) out there."

The meeting, Hosmer said, cleared the air, soothed the sting of the losing skid and offered an opportunity to exhale. Two weeks later, the Royals had won two straight series, shown signs of life on offense and emerged from a long, hard lull.

“I just think overall, as a team, we’re playing a lot better,” Hosmer said.

On Wednesday afternoon, in the moments after a 3-2 victory over the Red Sox, another boy band — this time, the Backstreet Boys — was cued up inside the clubhouse. The Royals were back over .500 for the first time since May 7 — if only for a few hours — and the first quarter of the season was nearly in the books. Which means: There is still so much of the season left.

“I can’t predict championships,” Moore said. “I can’t predict what we’ll ultimately be. But as long as our team goes out and plays hard and commits to win together, we’ll win.”

This story was originally published May 19, 2016 at 9:10 PM with the headline "Dayton Moore: Royals in ‘fine shape’; rotation must be more consistent."