Dayton Moore

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Dayton Moore

Dayton Moore

Biographical Information[edit]

Dayton Moore replaced Allard Baird as General Manager of the Kansas City Royals in 2006, staying until 2021, when he became team President. He had previously worked in the Atlanta Braves front office. He was dismissed as President at the end of the 2022 season.

Moore graduated from George Mason University in 1989, then was an assistant coach at GMU from 1990 to 1994. He joined the Braves as an area scouting supervisor, then moved up to the front office as an assistant in the baseball operations department in 1996. He was the Assistant Director of Scouting in 1997-1999 and Assistant Director of Player Development in 1999. He was promoted to Director of International Scouting during the 2000 season and earned a promotion to Director of Player Personnel in 2002. He became the Assistant General Manager/Baseball Operations in August, 2005.

With the Royals, Moore joined a franchise that had not made the postseason since its win in the 1985 World Series (which Moore had watched while growing up as a Royals fan even though his family moved around a lot) and which had acquired a reputation as one of the worst-run in the major leagues. He set about building a competitive scouting department and building from within, abandoning the previous regime's strategy of acquiring second-tier and usually overpriced free agents in trying unsuccessfully to "win now" (or at least, to placate the fans by giving the impression that they were trying to). It took a while for the strategy to bear fruit, and Moore displayed the patience that his predecessors had lacked by sticking to the plan, but by 2013, the Royals were playing above .500 and were on the cusp of the postseason race.

Things came together in 2014, when the team not only made the postseason as a wild card, but defeated the Oakland Athletics in an epic Wild Card Game, then swept through the Division Series and League Championship Series to reach the World Series. They lost to the San Francisco Giants in seven games, with Alex Gordon, representing the tying run, agonizingly stranded on third base in the 9th inning of Game 7. The Royals came back with an even better season in 2015, posting the best record in the American League, and this time winning the second Championship in franchise history when they defeated the New York Mets in five games in the 2015 World Series.

In spring training in 2018, he received attention for a rather unique initiative, which was to organize a session for players at both the major league and minor league level and other members of the organization on the dangers and downsides of pornography. He ran into some criticism because the group he asked to organize the seminar, "Fight the New Drug", was known for spreading doubtful scientific facts about the effects of pornography on the brain, trying to disguise what was essentially a religious message under a veneer of pseudo-science.

At the end of the 2021 season, he stepped down from his role as General manager in favor of J.J. Picollo, who until then had been the Assistant GM. Picollo, who also came from the Braves system, was the first person he hired after getting the Royals' job and had served as his right-hand man for a number of years already. For his part, Moore remained a key player in the organization, with the title of President.However, following another season in which the team did not seem to improve in any manner in 2022, he was fired by team owner John Sherman, who thanked him for 16 years of service. He was not replaced in the immediate, as Picollo was to take on his former repsonsibilities. In November, he was hired by the Texas Rangers as a senior adviser in their baseball operations department.

His son Robert Moore, a second baseman with the University of Arkansas, is considered to be a potential first-round pick in the 2022 amateur draft.


Preceded by
Allard Baird 		Kansas City Royals General Manager
2006-2021 		Succeeded by
J.J. Picollo

Record as a General Manager[edit]

Draft Picks[edit]

Significant Trades[edit]

Significant Signings[edit]

Further Reading[edit]

  • Jack Baer: "Dayton Moore amid 6th straight losing season", Yahoo! Sports, September 21, 2022. [1]
  • Jeffrey Flanagan: "Moore's vision realized, patience rewarded: GM builds championship club; owner Glass thrilled with Royals' title", mlb.com, November 2, 2015. [2]
  • Bob Nightengale: "For Royals GM Dayton Moore, anti-porn message worth the scorn, scientific scrutiny", USA Today Sports, March 13, 2018. [3]
  • Joe Posnanski: "As Royals reset, Moore of same from GM: 'You hold true to the things you believe in and the things you've learned,' he says", mlb.com, March 2, 2018. [4]

Related Sites[edit]

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