Royals general manager Dayton Moore was asked a couple of interesting questions the other day. He was asked why, when the Royals desperately need players who can get on base, he traded for a slugging first baseman named Mike Jacobs, who cannot.</p><p>Moore asked a couple of questions in return.</p><p>He asked: &#8220;Should we do nothing because his on-base percentage is not what we want? Should we do nothing even though our coaches think they can help this guy improve and when we know this guy is a hard worker?&#8221;</p><p>These are interesting questions. My answers would be: Yes and also yes.</p><p>We&#8217;ll get to those answers in just a minute, but first: I think Dayton Moore is doing a terrific job. I think he has &#8212; through patience, some excellent hires and a firm direction &#8212; brought the Royals to a good place. They have two of the best young pitchers in baseball in Zack Greinke and Joakim Soria. They have a potentially excellent rotation, and a bullpen that gets people out. They have a few promising young hitters, including a 24-year-old first baseman named Kila Ka&#8217;aihue who may have been the best hitter in the entire minor leagues in 2008.</p><p>And much of Moore&#8217;s good work &#8212; in Latin America, in the draft, in restructuring the scouting and development departments &#8212; hasn&#8217;t even started to pay off yet. Things are looking up.</p><p>I&#8217;m not the only one who believes this. Baseball writer and general guru Bill James &#8212; you may have seen this &#8212; wrote that the Royals rank fifth in baseball in major-league ready young talent. He also wrote that this team could win 85-90 games next year with all that young talent. I&#8217;ve heard from numerous scouts, executives and insiders who more or less agree that the Royals are going the right way.</p><p>So, yes, it seems that the Dayton Moore plan is working. The Royals are improving. They seem poised to take a big jump. That doesn&#8217;t mean Moore should just sit still &#8212; hey, go knock yourself out, work the cell phone, bat around trade offers, scour the minor-league free agents list, see if you can take a few gambles that might pay off big.</p><p>But, it seems to me, the important thing now is this: DO NOT GET OFF TRACK.</p><p>And so, no, I don&#8217;t get the trade with Florida for Mike Jacobs at all. The Royals didn&#8217;t give up that much for Jacobs &#8212; they traded middle reliever Leo Nu&#241;ez &#8212; but that&#8217;s not the point. Baseball trades these days, almost always, are about money, and Jacobs probably will make more than $3 million this year. The Marlins didn&#8217;t want to pay that. They were happy to push Jacobs off on the Royals for whatever they could get.</p><p>Now, Jacobs has his positives &#8212; those would be the 32 homers he hit last year. That number would have led the Royals last year or any other year going back to 2000. He has real power. It&#8217;s also true, however, that he is probably the worst defensive first baseman in the game &#8212; bad enough that he really should DH &#8212; and he&#8217;s a very slow base runner, and he cannot hit left-handed pitching and, most of all, he doesn&#8217;t get on base. His .299 on-base percentage last year was the worst for any first baseman in the league.</p><p>There IS evidence, to be fair, that Jacobs was jinxed last year, that he hit into tough luck and had quite a few hits taken away. Trouble is, his .317 on-base percentage the year before that was also the worst for any first baseman in the National League. And his .325 on-base percentage the year before THAT was also the worst for any first baseman in the National League. So, he has been consistently off base.