Not exactly easy listening Pt. VIII

If you're reading this and you aren't a regular listener to Baseball Prospectus' "Fringe Average" podcast, stop reading this, stop whatever else you're doing and listen to last week's episode here.

In the final half-hour, roughly, hosts Mike Ferrin and Jason Parks discus the MLB Draft. The Royals, as you might imagine, feature prominently in the discussion.

They don't grill Dayton Moore to the degree I did, but they too were critical. While Parks doesn't agree with me that Austin Meadows was necessarily a no-brainer instead of Hunter Dozier, he doesn't endorse the Dozier pick. He did mention right field as a possible position where Dozier winds up, which also lends itself to the theory Moore was in search of a quick fix for a position of need. I believe it was Parks who theorizes the Royals went cheap with their first pick in order to afford prep pitcher Phil Bickford with their second pick.

Of course, Bickford went two picks after Dozier at No. 10, so if that was Moore's master plan all along, he couldn't have been more wrong.

And if there's been any defense of Moore, it's been that he drafted Sean Manaea, who was once considered a possible No. 1 pick, at No. 34 in the Competitive Balance Round. But Parks does not fall into line with that defense. He doesn't consider Manaea a Top 5 talent because, well, he wasn't a Top 5 pick. If he were, he wouldn't have lasted as long as he did. And it wouldn't have been a widely known fact he was going to be available at No. 34 if he was an elite talent. Who knows how much further Manaea would have fallen had the Royals not selected him seeing how, you know, most organizations tend to avoid pitchers with shaky mechanics that are already leading to injuries.

One final note of interest for Royals fans from the podcast was their discussion on Jason McLeod, Cubs Senior Vice President in charge of Scouting and Player Development. I said months ago I didn't have any suggestions on who should replace Moore. Now I do. From what Ferrin and Parks had to say, McLeod is on the short list of front office personnel soon to be hired as GM of some franchise. He's worked with the Red Sox, Padres and now Cubs. Seeing how two of those stints were under Theo Epstein, I think it's safe to assume he would focus more on advanced analytics than Moore has. So there you go. Now we have someone to campaign for. His name is Jason McLeod.

Fire Dayton Moore
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