KC Not In Last Place?

The future for Kansas City is looking up. They've got a strong (and young) set of quality hitters (Alex Gordon, Billy Butler should be a solid 3-4 for a lot of years). There's some pitching (Zach Greinke, Gil Meche, Brian Bannister, Joakim Soria) and a good general manager. This year they've also added a smart guy to be in charge on the field - former Japanese league manager Trey Hillman. Hillman is not only preaching the necessity of fundamentals (and he isn't afraid to publicly yell at his guys when they make four base running mistakes in a spring training game); he also understands the importance of on-base percentage. When asked about his opinion of OBP he replied "OBP is a no-brainer...Get on base and have guys drive you in. Be aggressively disciplined in the strike zone, but take your walks. After that, it depends on what you’re talking about...If you’re talking about the middle of the lineup, which I consider three through seven, then I look for run production. So I go to slug (slugging percentage)." Even better, apparently he said it "like it should have been the most drop-dead obvious thing in the world to anybody that cared." The original article and the commentary on it.