What moves do the Kansas City Royals need to make before the MLB trade deadline?
A disappointing season means the Royals have to reshape their roster in hopes of finding a brighter future.
The Kansas City Royals are a team in need of a rebuild, few doubted that when the season began in April, but there are degrees to losing and posting more than twenty games under .500 in July does not bode well for the team. Bobby Witt Jr. is heating up and they have some promising players, but this trade season the Royals have the same mission as any other teams not in contention: sell.
Current situation and previous moves
The Royals are 38-59 and duking it out with the Detroit Tigers to avoid the Al Central’s basement position, but the team’s fans probably have their sights focused on the minor teams and their top prospects while the major league team finishes the season because, simply, they have to.
The Royals have already offloaded 1B/DH Carlos Santana in a trade with the Mariners that provided Kansas with a couple of fresh pitchers. Santana is a veteran who was not offering much and was in the final year of his contract. The Dominican has been playing better since arriving in Seattle, with as many home runs in a month there than he had for the Royals until the trade, but the additions of right-handers Wyatt Mills and William Fleming offer more upside in the future.
Candidates to be traded: Benintendi, Merrifield…
Their record, awful as it might be, does not mean that the Royals do not have good veteran players who could pique the interest of possible playoff teams. As things stand, none of these hitters will be on the next good Royals team, so the team has the obligation to move them while they can still extract optimum trade value out of them.
Second baseman Whit Merrifield is a Royal veteran, having debuted when he was 27 and although he has made a couple of All-Star appearances while in Kansas he is now a 33-year-old with just one more season under contract, and it’s a $7 million club option, so he’s both affordable and controlled for whichever team trades for him. He’s playing subpar baseball this year, with just a 81 OPS+ figure, but he could still fetch a low prospect or two from a contending team in need of depth.
Andrew Benintendi is the same age as Merrifield was when he was a rookie, but he’s no such thing, as the 27-year-old has been in the majors for as many seasons as his teammate, even winning a WS with the Red Sox at the start of his career. He was traded out of Boston when his numbers dipped a bit, but he’s back to his best hitting just before becoming a free agent this offseason. He was the Royals All-Star this season and could actually net some good prospects in return.
The team could also try to find trading partners for some pitchers such as Bubic, whose value would be higher for other teams rather than the Royals.
There’s hope for the Royals, just not yet
MLB’s top prospect entering the season, SS Bobby Witt Jr, is the reason to believe that the club will end up turning it around, but he’s still a rookie. He’s slashing .258/.301/.459 and improving each month. The Royals have to keep adding pieces that can help the team long term as Witt improves and some of their other prospects, such as top-100 infielders Pasquatino and Pratto, climb through the minor leagues.