Thursday, August 8, 2013

Royals Competitive Advantage

in the chat this afternoon, I took a second to ask General Manager Dayton Moore this question:
Dayton, I was a huge fan of the outside the box strategy of going over the slot in the draft to build a farm system quick. Are there any ways that the Royals are separating themselves from the pack? Are there any avenues in which this organization sees a potential advantage? I won't tell anyone.
Here was his response:
Every organization has good scouts domestically and internationally. It comes down to scouts that are passionate and instinctive and have a strong feel for players. And then you must provide a great environment for them to develop and reach their ceiling. The two components go hand in hand. And I believe as long as we have great synergy between our scouting and our player development departments, we will consistently produce talented players.
Now obviously, if Dayton Moore really felt they had something unique that other teams weren't aware of then he wouldn't have said it in a Kansas City Star chat. At the same time, I think he is sincere in his belief that the Royals greatest advantage comes from a synergy between scouting and player development.

First let me be perfectly clear, I do not discount scouting. It is critical for a team's success. At the same time every organization in baseball has a scouting and player development departments. How many of those organizations don't pay lip service to the importance of these areas. I would hope that every organizations works hard in these avenues and feels confident in their own departments.

Synergy is defined by dictionary.com as the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of its parts. This sounds an awful lot like Dayton Moore's approach to roster construction. I am not saying synergy can't be a competitive advantage, but the key point would be how do you make the elements's sum greater than the individual pieces? That is what creates the competitive advantage.

I'm not going to get to caught up in a response to a fans' question on a Kansas City Star chat session, but I found this piece of information interesting. Synergy is great, but just saying that there is synergy doesn't mean much. However, 30 teams in baseball probably strive for synergy between their departments. It is hard to have a competitive advantage in any realm, especially those that are not tangible, and even more so in any area in which every competitor strives to perform well. I guess all we can do is hope that the Royals' synergy is truly so great that it is a competitive edge.

2 comments:

  1. Spot on. The right questions to ask for sure. What are the tactical and strategical specifics that will produce this synergy. The bottom line is how will we produce a conduit of players to the major league club. I hope it improves in that category. As far as the season goes, I fear that Dayton's stubborness to continue to play Frency, Johnson, and Getz for the first 2 month gave us too big of hole to dig out of. We squandered to 2 months of great pitching. While we have seemingly now given ourselves the best lineup that we have available, you can see from the injury last night to Tejada, coupled with Salvy being out gives us 4 weak spots in the order every night if we have to play that way. Too much to ask for the other guys to carry you forever. Hopefully, Miggy and Sal are both in lineup tomorrow. If not, i fear we are back to 3.8 runs per game as in May.

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  2. I totally agree. For a team that needed to maximize everything this season, the Royals wasted a lot of time on Frenchy and the blackhole of second base.

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