One thing we know for certain about Royals general manager Dayton Moore: The man has no problem dealing away relief pitchers. In his brief two-plus years as GM, he has traded away Jeremy Affeldt, J.P. Howell, Ambiorix Burgos, Andy Sisco, Octavio Dotel and Leo Nu&#241;ez. On Tuesday, he traded away another reliever, Ram-Ram, Ramon Ramirez, to Boston for that sugar-coated outfielder, Coco Crisp.</p><p>Before we get into this trade specifically, it&#8217;s worth pointing out what all this says about Moore: He is confident in his ability to build a bullpen. It seems to me that every general manager in baseball has a comfort zone, something they think they do better than anyone else. Maybe they believe in their ability to find good hitters or to find good players in Latin America or to make quiet little trades that work out big.</p><p>Moore clearly believes in his ability to put together a high-quality pen. He put together a good pen last year with minor trades, by signing a couple of free agents, by advancing some minor-leaguers and by using a brilliant Rule 5 draft pick as the dominant closer. He built the bullpen once; he obviously feels sure he can build it again.</p><p>Then, Moore seems to have an excellent feel for pitching in general. When he signed starter Gil Meche, lots of people around baseball laughed, but now just about every team happily would take that Meche contract. He traded for young starter Kyle Davies, who seemed to click at the end of last year, and starter Brian Bannister, who had a terrific rookie year and, I think, will bounce back in 2009.</p><p>Moore, though, has not shown the same poise and command when finding players in the field. His big acquisitions so far, to be blunt, have been one-dimensional players. Center fielder Joey Gathright is fast but, so far, has not hit enough. Shortstop Tony Pe&#241;a can play defense, but he hit .169 last year and showed more promise as a pitcher than a hitter. Outfielder Jos&#233; Guillen did drive in 97 runs last year, but he didn&#8217;t do much else other than cause problems. Moore&#8217;s latest acquisition, first baseman Mike Jacobs, has a lot of power, but he doesn&#8217;t get on base much, he can&#8217;t run and he doesn&#8217;t play defense very well.</p><p>True, it&#8217;s hard to find well-rounded players, but the big problem with the Royals&#8217; everyday lineup in 2008 was that it lacked any sort of clear purpose.</p><p>The Royals didn&#8217;t have speed, didn&#8217;t have power, didn&#8217;t get on base and didn&#8217;t play very good defense. That&#8217;s pretty much the whole ballgame right there. The Royals&#8217; everyday lineup did not have anything it could call its own.</p><p>In the end, I think, Crisp can help the Royals quite a lot. Oh, sure, he has some drawbacks. For one thing, he costs a lot of money &#8212; $5.75 million this year and $8 million next year if the Royals want to pick up the option (it will cost them a $500,000 buyout if they don&#8217;t). He is coming off three disappointing seasons in Boston, where his numbers dwindled, he dealt with injury problems, and he was eventually shoved to the bench for rookie Jacoby Ellsbury.</p><p>Also, Moore was adamant that he wanted to improve the Royals&#8217; on-base percentage, and Crisp doesn&#8217;t really help much. He has struggled getting on base as a leadoff hitter (he has a very low .312 on-base percentage in more than 1,000 plate appearances at leadoff), and the Royals would probably be wise to hit Crisp in another spot. But Crisp <em>seems</em> so much like a prototypical leadoff hitter (He&#8217;s fast, he can bunt and so on.) that I would bet the Royals will lead him off anyway, and hope.