Insider: Woeful Royals in disarray from top down

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In 1962, New York Mets manager Casey Stengel famously asked, "Can't anybody here play this game?"

In 2006, Kansas City Royals pitcher Scott Elarton famously (around Kauffman Stadium, at least) analyzed his own team and said it is "bad in every facet of the game."

Scott Elarton hasn't been shy about sharing his views on his teammates. (Getty Images)

Sometimes, the link between those awful, hilarious and wretched expansion Mets, who compiled the worst record in baseball history at 40-120, and the awful, not-so-hilarious and wretched teams of today that threaten to limbo right under those futile '62 Mets is not that far.

"I don't care if Casey Stengel's our manager and (we have) the greatest general manager in history," Elarton continued. "If guys aren't willing to put out the effort and do what they're capable of doing, it's not going to get any better."

The Royals matched the second-longest losing streak in club history Wednesday by dropping a 12th consecutive game, this time to Detroit. This on the heels of an 11-game losing streak in April. And a club-record 19-game losing streak last summer.

The icing on the cake: blowing a 6-0 lead against the Tigers on Thursday, losing 13-8 as first-place Detroit completed a four-game sweep.

"Jim Leyland is more paranoid by a long way than I am," St. Louis manager Tony La Russa said earlier in the week of the Detroit skipper -- in the immediate aftermath of the Cardinals' three-game sweep of Kansas City. "He can't sleep, he can't eat. All he can do is smoke.

"I heard him say (Monday) that he was scared of the four-game series against Kansas City -- and he meant it."

Ba-da-bum.

That the Royals, long since removed from the graceful days of George Brett, Amos Otis and Frank White, are an organization in shambles is obvious with every monthly dozen-game losing streak they compile.

That it starts with owner David Glass -- the Wal-Mart king -- is evident simply by the way things currently stand. Glass first threatened the possibility of sweeping organizational changes on April 20 -- as the Royals were putting the finishing touches on an 11-game losing streak.

Then he said that he was out of patience on May 3.

Through these statements, he has all but publicly locked general manager Allard Baird in the stocks down at public square, yet he inexplicably allows a good man to die a slow GM death.