The Kansas City Royals stink. They�re an absolute joke to baseball, and the man you can thank for this is incompotent owner David Glass. Unimaginably wealthy, Glass is tarnishing the Royals rich history of Bret Saberhagen and George Brett with every 100-loss season.

You see, from our perspective - and please, feel free to jump in here - Glass doesn�t want to spend his money on the Royals, because with a payroll of $30-ish million, he�d have to spend a hundred million to get within eyesight of a chair at the playoff table. (Cough, salary cap would be nice, cough.)

So instead of pumping money into his investment, Glass sits up in his luxury box, watches the Royals fans still line up to cheer on his disgusting team, and laughs all the way to the bank. It doesn�t seem to be terribly bad business, though, does it?

At any rate, with a hefty chunk of revenue sharing coming the Royals� way, there�s nothing like spending other people�s money. So we�re guessing that�s what the Royals did yesterday when they inked decidedly average pitcher Gil Meche to a whopping 5-year, $55 million contract.

Yes, he�s coming off his �best� season. If you want to get excited about 11-8 with a 4.48 ERA, by all means.

We�ll let you be the judge � is this the worst deal of the offseason? Among all the terribly embarrassing contracts given out this winter, three stand out:

Juan Pierre to the Dodgers: 5-years, $44 million
Gary Matthews Jr. to the Angels: 5-years, $50 million
Gil Meche to the Royas: 5-years, $55 million

We�ll weigh in later today or this weekend after we�ve had some time to digest the awfulness of these contracts.

It�s the pitching, stupid! (Royals Authority)
Royals Sign Meche (Knuckle Curve)
The Sad (Yankees 2000)