Say It Aint So

Hot off the "presses" is this new post from Rany. It seems that Rany has been "blacklisted" by the Royals (who knows what that means?) for his post about firing Royals trainer Nick Swartz.

Here are a few quotes:

Criticize a player, liken the manager’s intelligence with that of a farm animal, call for the GM’s head: these are all acceptable things. But suggest that the trainer might need to be upgraded after 19 years – well, that’s beyond the pale.

and

If you’ve got a problem with something I wrote, by all means, contact me – I’m not hard to get ahold of. I’m a big boy; I can handle it.

and

Stop worrying about the criticism that you’re getting from people like me – what, are you guys going to ban Posnanski now too? – and start looking at your organization with a critical eye yourselves. The defining hallmark of good organizations is that they are more critical of themselves than any outsider would be. And God knows there’s an awful lot to be critical about.

***

Obviously this is not a good move by the Royals. Rany's blog has grown in KC popularity over the last few years and he has a national audience through Baseball Prospectus and a friend with a large national following at ESPN named Rob Neyer.

I hope the PR people at Kauffman Stadium are ready to do some serious damage control. Once this gets around they'll be publicly lashed.