Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic also reporte<\/a> that the Royals no longer expect to add either Duran or Brendan Donovan.<\/p>\nThe Royals haven\u2019t been idle themselves, signing Lane Thomas and trading for Isaac Collins in an effort to improve their roster. While I wouldn\u2019t describe either as an \u201cimpact bat,\u201d they both should be floor-raisers and help improve the literally worst outfield in baseball next season. The Royals also did not need to trade from their starting pitching depth to acquire Thomas or Collins. Thomas signed as a free agent, and Collins was traded by the Milwaukee Brewers to the Royals for Angel Zerpa.<\/p>\n
J.J. Piccolo is now in an interesting position with the roster. He\u2019s improved the team from the outside without spending the \u201ccurrency of baseball\u201d that it was anticipated he would need to spend to improve the roster. Simply raising the floor on an outfield that was worth -1.1 fWAR should help the team dramatically. While we can\u2019t predict the future, it\u2019s reasonable to project that the Royals will be better in the outfield this year. It\u2019s also reasonable to hope that one of Carter Jensen or Jac Caglianone steps up and becomes the impact bat the Royals were looking for this offseason, but have not acquired. The team still has a lot of eggs in the \u201cyoung guys step up and succeed\u201d basket, but that may be the best option if they can\u2019t find a pitcher-for\u2013major league outfielder trade that makes sense.<\/p>\n
How the offseason has played out still leaves the Royals with enviable depth at starting pitching. There are still teams looking for starting pitching and presumably will be into spring training. Inevitably, some pitchers will get hurt during spring training or at the World Baseball Classic, which could make some teams even more desperate for pitching. While it doesn\u2019t seem like there is a perfect pitcher-for\u2013position player swap sitting out there, some team would presumably be willing to trade for a pitcher if the price is prospects, particularly prospects that aren\u2019t expected to help the major league team. The Royals\u2019 farm system, as noted by Matthew LaMar, is still lacking depth. That leads to the question: If you were in charge of the Royals, would you try shopping a pitcher for prospects?<\/p>\n
Mackenzie Gore and Freddy Peralta both commanded strong prospect packages for the Washington Nationals and the Milwaukee Brewers, showing that high-quality starting pitching – albeit with multiple years of control – is still commanding a premium on the trade market. I don\u2019t think the Royals would ever make him available like this, but even with his injury history, I assume Cole Ragans could fetch a similar prospect package, if not better. Kris Bubic, with his injury history and just one year of control left, wouldn\u2019t do as well, but the prospect(s) you could theoretically acquire for him might be a better quality of player than what teams were offering. Maybe there is a team that covets the years of control attached to Noah Cameron or Ryan Bergert, allowing the Royals to acquire multiple players who could help down the road.<\/p>\n
Making a trade like this would be a very Rays- or Brewers-like move. You would be moving something from the major league roster that you expect to help this year in order to feed the prospect promotion machine and help the organization in the future. You would have to be very confident that the rest of the major league roster could pick up the slack this season\u2014or not be overly concerned with winning this specific year\u2014while trying to raise the floor of the organization one small move at a time.<\/p>\n
Right now, having a projected #5 starter in Noah Cameron, with both Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek not expected to make the Opening Day rotation, feels like an overabundance of quality starting pitching. The Royals\u2019 farm system is improving slowly, but \u201cslowly\u201d is the key word. It makes some rational sense to take from an area where the depth might not help you much this year and turn that into players who could help in the future, either on the roster or in future trades. Of course, pitcher injuries are very real, and what feels like an overabundance of pitching right now could quickly feel like not enough if Royals starters start going down at the rate they did last year. It would be a risk\u2014one that could hurt the 2026 Royals\u2019 chances\u2014but it\u2019s also the kind of transactional move I\u2019m fairly confident other GMs would make.<\/p>\n
I think it\u2019s fairly unlikely that the Royals would move one of their starters strictly for prospects. I don\u2019t think they have had enough major league success to make a move that could backfire and hurt the team this year, even if we can envision a scenario where they trade a pitcher, add prospect help, and still make the playoffs. Unless a team overwhelmed me with prospects, I wouldn\u2019t want to make a trade like this if I were Piccolo.<\/p>\n
The fact that I\u2019m fairly certain the Brewers would make a move like this, however, makes me want to at least consider the idea rather than dismiss it out of hand. They have remained successful at the major league level while reloading their farm system for future years, and I would like the Royals to reach that level at some point. What do you all think? Should the Royals carry their starting pitching depth into the season, or should they trade a starter for future help?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the major goals for the Kansas City Royals this offseason was to acquire an impact bat,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,2596,2595,4,252,39420],"class_list":{"0":"post-542495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-kansas","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-royals","12":"tag-kansascity","13":"tag-kansascityroyals","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-royals","16":"tag-royals-editorials-reactions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115973629372414325","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}