Royals GM Dayton Moore says things are going to change around here. Of course, everyone has been scrambling to figure out what he means by that. Does this mean the Royals make some major deals this offseason? Will they sign another high-priced free agent or two? Will they dump some players who have underperformed?</p><p>Maybe. Maybe not. But none of those gets to the main point.</p><p>Moore&#8217;s main point is this: Things are going to change around here. He&#8217;s had enough.</p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s it,&#8221; he says. &#8220;We&#8217;re at a point now where you will never, ever hear me say again that we have young players who are improving. You will never, ever hear me say again that we are rebuilding. That stuff is over. I&#8217;m sick of all that.</p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not a young team anymore. We&#8217;re not an improving team anymore. There are no more excuses. It&#8217;s not like we made a lot of excuses before, but I&#8217;m sick of all that. It&#8217;s time now.&#8221;</p><p>Now we get to the heart of things: Dayton Moore is tired of conceding. He&#8217;s tired of telling people that winning will take time. He came to Kansas City to make the Royals a proud organization again. He came to Kansas City to make the Royals <em>the team,</em> to make everyone, in and out of town, look at the Royals and say, &#8220;Man, those guys know what they&#8217;re doing.&#8221;</p><p>That hasn&#8217;t happened yet. Nothing close. Until a big finish, the Royals seemed destined for another last-place and another dreadful year. The big finish moved them out of the basement (first time in five years) and offered a bit of hope &#8212; but this is the point. Moore doesn&#8217;t want that kind of hope anymore. Moore doesn&#8217;t want moral victories. It drove him mad last year when former Texas Tech coach Bob Knight came to town for Big 12 media days and popped a couple of jokes about the Royals.</p><p>&#8220;I used to like Bob Knight,&#8221; Moore said through gritted teeth &#8212; and he was joking, but he wasn&#8217;t joking at all. He takes all the slights personally. He keeps a loose list in his mind of all the commentators who have bagged on the Royals the last three years. It isn&#8217;t that he plans on telling them &#8220;I told you so&#8221; at some point. Not at all. It&#8217;s that he fully expects that someday he won&#8217;t <em>have</em> to say, &#8220;I told you so.&#8221; They will know.</p><p>Moore has been general manager of the Royals now for two full seasons plus the second half of 2006. He has seen the Royals&#8217; big-league club make steady improvement, from the second half of another 100-loss season (their fourth in five years), to a 93-loss season, to this year when the Royals went 75-87. He is confident that the Royals have made huge strides in the lower realms of the minor leagues and, especially, in Latin America. He&#8217;s reasonably proud of the incremental improvement. He knew this would not be an overnight project.</p><p>Still, Moore crossed a line this season. In Kansas City &#8212; because the payroll&#8217;s lower than most and the team has not been especially good in years &#8212; it&#8217;s easy to get stuck on the &#8220;Hey, we&#8217;re getting better&#8221; treadmill. They pick up a few new players, pray for a couple of young guys to emerge, and say, &#8220;Hey we&#8217;re getting better.&#8221;</p><p>Well, Moore is tired of running in place. He shocked more than a few people around baseball when he let go scouting director Deric Ladnier in September. Ladnier is well-liked, and by most accounts the Royals had a good amateur draft in 2008, highlighted by the drafting and signing of two players &#8212; first baseman Eric Hosmer and pitcher Tim Melville &#8212; who are considered big-time talents.