Moore will be no lame duck for Royals

The Kansas City Royals announced last week that GM Dayton Moore would be getting a two-year extension. His contract, which was set to expire after 2014, now runs through 2016.

Royals GM Dayton Moore.

Setting aside the issue how good or poor Moore is at running a baseball team, giving him an extension is a good idea for the Royals.

It's never a good idea to let a coach, or especially a general manager, go into a lame-duck season. Why? Because you don't want anyone making short-term decisions with the goal saving their job at the expense of the long-term fortunes of the team.

You could argue Moore has already done that, swapping Wil Myers for James Shields last off season. If the Royals hadn't just won 86 games and been on the periphery of the Wild Card chase, Moore might have been looking for a job right now.

Maybe the extension happened a year too late, because here's the thing: No matter how many years Moore has left on his contract, when Royals owner David Glass gets tired of him, he will fire him.

And why not? Moore made only $1 million per year on his original contract. Double that, extend him for five years, then fire him next winter, and the Royals will have wasted only a fraction of what Moore might spend on a low-tier free agent.

In that sense it is a false job security a baseball executive has with a long-term contract, though like most of us, I'm sure Moore and his colleagues aren't averse to being guaranteed some measure of financial security. The investment to keep management focused on the long-term is so modest compared to the downside of rash decision-making, it just doesn't make sense to let a GM twist in the winds of a contract year.