I wrote the other day that I wanted to put the negativity aside temporarily and enjoy the Bucs' current streak of good fortune. That still holds, especially since the team began its current home stretch off right by taking two of three from the Brewers. The team is playing good ball and its actually fun to tune into the team's games again.

Still, something came up in my internet news reading that I felt was rather interesting. The Lawrence Journal-World asked baseball analyst and Red Sox senior advisor (not to mention Lawrence resident) Bill James to analyze how the Royals have come to the sad situation they currently find themselves. His answer is interesting because it applies, almost verbatim, to the Pirates organization over the last decade. Here's his summary:

So ... my opinion, there are five reasons the Royals are where they are:

1) The economics of the game are stacked against smaller cities.

2) They have drafted relatively poorly in the last 10 years.

3) In the early- to mid-'90s, the Royals didn't know a ballplayer from a skeet shooter and committed themselves to staving off ruin by bringing in a long series of fading stars. This caused the base of the organization to crumble, which increased the financial pressures on the team, putting them in a position from which they never have recovered.

4) When the Royals have had young players that they could not afford to keep, they have uniformly failed to acquire value in exchange. The worst example of this was last year with the Carlos Beltran trade.

5) The Royals have been unable to identify and acquire the kind of affordable, decent journeymen players who could serve as a tourniquet on the organization.

The names may be different, but he might as well be talking about the Pirates.