Now that the code name “Deep Throat” is no longer needed by Mark Felt, perhaps it’s available for someone within the Kansas City Royals organization, someone willing to alert the press to just what is going on with this once-successful team. Mr. President, there is a cancer on Kauffman Stadium.

Once the Yankees’ great nemesis, the Royals have been struggling for roughly 15 years. Never mind the Royals’ two consecutive wins over a lifeless Yankee team; the last two days say more about what’s wrong with the Yankees than what’s right with the Royals.

The Royals have the American League’s worst record (15-37), its second-worst offense (4.12 runs scored per game), and its worst pitching staff (5.60 ERA). The team’s best pitcher, 21-year-old Zack Greinke, is 1-6 despite a respectable 4.23 ERA; the team’s major off-season acquisition, Jose Lima, has an 8.13 ERA. On the whole of the major league roster, there are perhaps only six players you would choose to save from a sinking ship – a list that does not include a few players who are being billed as “promising youngsters.”

There is enough work here for two managers, which can’t be encouraging for Buddy Bell, who this week inaugurated the sixth, but almost certainly not final, caretaker administration (not including interim skippers) during this seemingly endless period of lassitude. And yet, Bell is not likely to have much of an impact,not only because this franchise needs hospice care more than it needs a manager, but because he brings no point of view and no signature managerial skill that will help to redefine the franchise.

One of the easiest ways to measure a team’s mental competence is in how it hires its managers. When a manager has a lengthy track record, as does Bell, his tendencies as far as player deployment and in-game tactics are quite clear, and there is an anecdotal record of his off field rapport with players. How a team tailors its choice of managers to the organizational outlook says a lot about the direction it is headed in.

Take the Texas Rangers’ hiring of Buck Showalter in 2003. In Showalter, the Rangers knew they were getting a manager in the literal sense of the word, one who focused on discipline and esprit de corps. Tactical competence was a distant second, but with many good players coming up from the farm system and a pitching staff that had been in disarray since roughly 1972, team executives prioritized a manager who could regiment his team over one who knew when to bunt. The results have included the successful promotion of Mark Teixeira and Hank Blalock into starting roles, a useful pitching staff, a near-miss third-place finish last year, and a first place record this year.

When Theo Epstein hired Terry Francona to manage the Red Sox, he was looking for a manager who knew when not to bunt. Francona’s reputation was that of an easy-going but focused manager of men – he had told Michael Jordan to run ’em out or get out when he managed His Airness at Triple-A Birmingham. As a tactician, however, he was strictly vanilla: His only strategic hallmark was a tendency to believe Curt Schilling when he said that he could be effective after pitch no. 150.

It turned out that this was roughly what the Red Sox were looking for; a good clubhouse man happy to have the more baroque aspects of strategy permanently taken off his menu in accordance with organizational dogma. He performed to expectations, presiding over just 12 sacrifice bunts, a harmonious clubhouse, a broken-down Schilling, and a World Series title.

Buddy Bell managed for all or part of six seasons (1996-98 with Detroit, 2000-02 with Colorado). before coming to the Royals. He liked speed, toting Brian Hunter from Detroit to Colorado and giving playing time to the punchless but quick Tom Goodwin. This emphasis on speed while playing in parks that favored power increased the likelihood that his teams would be outhomered in their own ballparks.

Similarly, Bell’s profligate use of the intentional walk – two of Bell’s Tigers teams led the AL; one Rockies team finished second, the other fourth – served mainly to put extra runners on base for when the next hitter would jack one into the short right-field porch of old Tigers Stadium or the thin air of Denver. In recent seasons, Kauffman Stadium has been one of the most hitter-friendly parks in the American League, which will only serve to exacerbate Bell’s strategic shortcomings.

Having signed on to head up rebuilding efforts for both of his previous teams, Bell has always been willing to give a young player a try. However, he hasn’t been too discriminating, mixing the Juan Pierres with the Kimera Bartees (there’s that speed fetish again). These woeful Royals will test what Bell has learned; if he still can’t discriminate between the talented young players and those filling out the roster, his years in Kansas City will be experimentation for its own sake rather than in the cause of progress.

How will any of this help a bad ballclub get better? “Deep Throat,” please report in.

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TINO’S TAILSPIN We often think of players’ abilities in binary terms: good year/bad year, young/old, can hit/can’t hit. Tino Martinez, 37, has a way of confounding these constructions, or perhaps conforming to them too closely, as this season he’s been mostly off, except for a two-week period when he was on:

In April, Martinez seemed ready for retirement. What happened next was improbable not only by the standards of April and Martinez’s age, but of his career in general. A seemingly inevitable correction followed, and a severe one.

It is impossible to say when or if Martinez will again channel early May’s odd combination of Lou Gehrig and his younger self. It is tempting to dismiss the possibility as extremely unlikely, but for the fact that the first such streak was even more unlikely. Suffice it to say that if the Yankees are stuck between looking for an upgrade at first base and waiting for the Bamtino to come around again, the upgrade is the safer choice.

Mr. Goldman in the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.