On Friday afternoon, as the skies turned gray above Kauffman Stadium, Royals general manager Dayton Moore stood near a railing along the first-base dugout. He wore a dark suit and pushed a cell phone to his right ear. As the Royals’ grounds crew prepared the field for batting practice before a series opener against the Toronto Blue Jays, Moore fielded another call about the state of his baseball team.
The scene could have been from April, when the Royals opened this season as the reigning World Series champions; it could have been June, when Moore’s team sat in first place in the American League Central, poised for another run.