Now with Rangers, former Kansas City Royals exec Dayton Moore recalls best times in KC

Dayton Moore is once again associated with a pennant-contending team. Unfortunately for Royals fans, it’s not in Kansas City.

After he was fired by the Royals as president of baseball operations before the end of the 2022 season, Moore was hired by the Texas Rangers as a senior advisor. The role reunited Moore with former Royals pitcher Chris Young, the Rangers’ general manager.

How is that going? After six straight losing seasons, the Rangers stand atop the AL West with a 44-27 record, 4 1/2 games ahead of the Los Angeles Angels entering Monday’s competition.

“I love working with Chris Young,” said Moore, who on Monday oversaw baseball camps at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park in conjunction with the C You in the Major Leagues Foundation. The C You in the Major Leagues organization was created by Moore and his wife Marianne in 2013.

That year, with Moore serving as their general manager, the Royals posted their first winning record in a decade. Their ascent continued in 2014 with a playoff berth that ended a 29-year drought, and ultimately a World Series appearance. The big payoff came in 2015 with the franchise’s second World Series championship.

Those teams, managed by Ned Yost, were shaped by shrewd trades and draft decisions that paid off. But after two more years of competitive baseball, the winning stopped.

For Moore, the happy memories still linger.

“As you talk about that I get goose bumps,” he said. “One of the things we set out to do as a group is bring honor back to Kansas City Royals and tradition. Where young boys and girls could celebrate this team, the importance of this team and this community, where they wanted to idolize certain players — and that started to happen.”

That it did, with position players like Alex Gordon, Billy Butler, Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Salvador Perez, and pitchers like Yordano Ventura, James Shields, Wade Davis, Kelvin Herrera and Greg Holland.

Young, the Rangers’ GM, was part of the 2015 Royals’ pitching staff. He retired as a player in 2017 and was hired by the Rangers in 2020 after spending two years working for Major League Baseball.

“I’m not sure I’ve had a greater honor in my career than having one of our ex-players ask me to join him and be part of what he’s trying to do,” Moore said.

Moore said there’s nothing to be gained by looking back at the bumpy post-championship years that led to his firing, and that of manager Mike Matheny, who was let go after three losing seasons. And he isn’t going to try to explain what’s gone wrong for this year’s team, which took an AL Central-worst 19-52 record to Detroit on Monday to open a series against the Tigers.

“I love the Royals. I’ve always loved the Royals,” Moore said. “We’re going to pull for the people to do well. I can’t allow myself to travel down any other road.”

Moore responded to a question about the balance of traditional scouting and player development with analytics and technology and defended his approach.

“I’ve always utilized the numbers,” he said. “But I always believe, and continue to believe, that leadership is more of a heart thing than anything else. Your mind doesn’t tell you that you need to show grace to somebody ... or you have to be able to encourage somebody or forgive somebody or to love somebody.

“I believe that comes from your heart, and that’s what leadership is about. It begins and ends with putting other people first. I’ll never put outcomes over people and relationships. Some said we believed in people too much — ‘You kept players around too long.’ I always felt it was our responsibility in leadership to believe in people, provide opportunities for people, pick them up when they’re down.

“Yes, they’re going to make mistakes. You just make an advanced decision when they make those mistakes, as long as their heart is right, you’re going to do everything you can to support and encourage them.”

Moore went on to say he never made a decision about acquiring or trading a player “where there wasn’t the most advanced data analyzed, the most important medical information analyzed, certainly the character analysis. A financial component as well, and a scouting judgment, also.”

Moore’s antenna rose when recent speculation surfaced about Perez being a potential trade chip for the Royals as they look to reconfigure for the future.

“Salvy’s one of most special people and players I’ve ever been around in my life,” Moore said. “I believe there are more good NFL quarterbacks than major-league catchers, and we get a chance to watch one of the best major-league catchers of all-time play in Kansas City.”