Royals trade deadline mailbag

Why don't the Royals just build up around the existing stadium complex? What will the team do about the baserunning? These questions and more answered.

Since early last season, I have lived by one mantra, stolen from The Empire Strikes Back. As Han Solo flies his ship into an asteroid field, C-3P0 begins exclaiming dramatically about the odds of surviving such a stunt. Solo delivers the line and, despite some scary moments, the heroes all pull through. Even when things seemed most dire for Kansas City last season, and for large chunks of this season, I've argued they should keep trying to make the playoffs.

(Editor's note: Much of this was written Sunday evening. The reason it's only showing up today is that I came down with COVID, and that somehow made me forget to schedule the article. Mea culpa.)

With the news that Kris Bubic is headed to the IL with a rotator cuff strain, it's entirely possible he misses the rest of the season. Despite hopes that Cole Ragans could return early in August, he still hasn't started a rehab assignment. We're still waiting for word on when Michael Lorenzen will resume throwing as well, much less pitching, much less pitching in the big leagues.

Never tell me the odds! But, well, sometimes you don't have to tell me for me to see things look pretty bad. Perhaps, as Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia Organa did in Star Wars, it's time for the Royals to take a step back, lick their wounds, and prepare to try again next time.

But before they can do that, there are a few more days until the trade deadline and then a lot of questions about the future of the team, both on and off the field, that need to be answered. So let's get to some of yours.

Shortly after this question was posed, the Royals added Randal Grichuk to the roster by giving up reliever Andrew Hoffmann. Grichuk is no longer the hitter he once was, but he has been roughly league-average this year, and that's a huge improvement over what the Royals have been putting out there. Given the injury to Bubic, it seems unlikely they'll be willing to add anyone better unless they can control that player through next season, at least.

I had assumed the Royals would throw in the towel - a term that comes from boxing when a cornerman surrenders the game on behalf of a boxer who doesn't know when to quit - but instead they went ahead and extended Seth Lugo. Now it seems like it would be foolish to not bring in a worthwhile bat. If they can find someone who will trade one. As of this writing, Thursday evening, there have been exactly zero big trades completed. I don't believe in my 30 years of watching baseball, I've ever seen so much smoke and so little fire at the trade deadline.

This is an interesting question. The common response among media members has been no, of course not. Royals pitchers give up a similar number of home runs on the road and at home, so the fault would seem to lie with the hitters. But if the Royals are going to employ primarily hitters with what is currently warning track power, it might make sense to consider it.

Kauffman Stadium ranks as the third-worst stadium for hitting home runs in baseball this season, per Baseball Savant. Ultimately, the strength of this team has been in its pitching. The team should consider all options, but they would have to weigh the risk that bringing the fences in makes their pitching worse more than it makes their hitting better. It also seems kind of silly to try to tailor the stadium to the team as currently constructed when the team will, by the nature of such things, change drastically in short periods of time.

I clarified on Bluesky and was told Richard would like to see Royals baserunning coach Damon Hollins fired. I think David Lesky put it best on a recent Kauffman Corner podcast when he said, "The Royals should fire 2025 Damon Hollins and hire 2024 Damon Hollins."

The Royals were one of the best baserunning teams in the sport last year. They're one of the worst this year. The runners and coaches are almost entirely the same. It doesn't make any sense. If the Royals want to make a change, the most likely time to do so would be during the offseason. I'm just not sure whether they will or even whether they should. Certainly something will need to change, it's just unclear what.

I think Bobby's contract - and to a similar extent, the team's desire to get someone to build them a new stadium - is having a huge impact on how the Royals are approaching things, not just at the deadline, but for the past two years. Bobby Witt Jr. should be a Royal for life. He wants to play for a winner. If you want to keep him happy, you have to keep trying to win. That means not selling unless your team is in much worse shape than the Royals have been to this point. In the same vein, fans and politicians want to back winners. If the Royals want to get the maximum funding and support from the public for a new stadium, they're going to have to keep trying to win.

But to worry that the Royals won't be able to win in the future because of Bobby's deal doesn't seem right to me. The team might try to make the argument in the future that they can't afford other players because they're paying Bobby, but really that would be an admission that they simply refuse to spend the money that will allow them to compete because, barring disaster, Bobby is always going to be worth what the Royals are paying him.

This question was asked after Tyler Tolbert put the team in a dire situation in the bottom of the tenth during the first game of Saturday's doubleheader. After starting the inning as the tying run at second in the form of a ghost runner, he allowed himself to be picked off.

The answer is simple. Tolbert is on the team because he offers defensive versatility - he can play all three outfield spots and the infield outside of first base and catcher - as well as blazing speed. He's only been caught stealing once all year, due to an awful challenge against the Mets. He has been picked off an additional three times, but the Royals as a whole lead baseball in being picked off - Kyle Isbel just got picked off again yesterday - so that hardly makes him unique on the team.

None of that matters so much as the next question, however: which guy would you rather see on the roster who is currently in the Royals’ system? Dairon Blanco is their other pinch-running specialist, and he was worse. Cavan Biggio is no longer with the team, and offers similar positional versatility, but even though he wasn't getting picked off, he was even more of an automatic out at the plate, bats left-handed, and couldn't steal or take extra bases like Tolbert can.

It's reasonable to be frustrated with Tolbert being picked off so much. Hopefully, that's something he and the team can improve upon. But the team simply doesn't have any better options, right now.

I'm not privy to the Royals' internal discussions on such matters, but I believe it's safe to say that if such a thing were reasonable to achieve, someone would have done it in the past 50 years. The location simply doesn't lend itself to being built up like that for some reason.

Of course, that should probably make you question how much revenue a downtown stadium would actually bring to Kansas City or Clay County or wherever the next one gets built, too. If they can't build revenue where they're at, what on earth makes anyone think they can do it elsewhere?

Freddy Fermin is a starting-quality catcher. That's primarily on the back of his defense, however, not his offense. More than that, though, he has been batting at the bottom of a lineup that has been very bad all year, and especially bad at the bottom. He has 16 runs scored because when he has gotten on, it's been ahead of the better hitters at the top of the lineup.

RBIs are often as much about opportunity as talent. If you simply aren't getting RBI opportunities, you won't have RBIs. Freddy hasn't been getting opportunities.

Certainly, the Royals could trade him, but other teams are just as capable of seeing his lifetime average as you are. They may not be willing to pay for the player he has been becoming this season. Also, I know he was slumping for a bit, but he had a 167 wRC+ since the break before yesterday's game, so perhaps he just needed some time off.

He also doesn't turn 26 until next March. Ages 26 - 28 are about when most players enter their physical prime. He could just be getting started.

Whether he has or not, it seems he's getting that opportunity. He's played in almost every game since the break, and if the Royals decide to hedge their bets at the deadline, Kyle Isbel could very easily be on the move. At that point, Rave would probably make the most sense to become the team's starting centerfielder.

Well, the team has already made two moves in acquiring Adam Frazier and Randal Grichuk to bolster their worst-in-baseball outfield. It's hard to imagine they keep buying, even in small ways, with Bubic hurt. At this point I'd expect them to sell. I think we could see Seth Lugo, Carlos Estévez, Freddy Fermin, and Kyle Isbel all headed to other clubs. The Royals will probably try to bring back a future outfield bat or two and some future pitching depth if they can find it.

Never say never, but I have a hard time seeing them doing nothing and it doesn't appear they have the pieces to go all in after the pitching injuries they've suffered in the last few weeks.

With the Seth Lugo extension, the Royals took their most valuable chip for selling off of the market. But it would be foolish to sign him to such an extension - even if it's a remarkably good deal - and call that a deadline. They probably need to add a serious bat and a cheap pitcher (think 2024 Michael Lorenzen) if they want to keep up the July hot streak. Do they have the trade chips to do that?

On the other hand, they did just finish the month of July with a .625 winning percentage. Is that the team you're going to give up on when, as noted above, you're trying to convince Bobby to stick around forever and the people of the KC area to buy you a brand new stadium? Seems unlikely.

The big question ends up being, "Is anyone trading anything of any value at any price?" As I write this, there are fewer than 24 hours until the deadline, and not a single notable player or prospect has been moved. Most of the rumors flying around are about deals that have already been declined. There are also a lot of interviews with players talking about how they don't really want to be traded. The media and fans have collectively become a stick figure boy poking at the ground with a stick, begging it to do something.

With all that, I think the odds are higher than normal that the Royals don't do much of note, because baseball is running out of time for any team to do anything of note. But I expect they're filling up the phone lines of other teams because the Royals have absolutely been more transactional since JJ Picollo took over, and this seems to be an inflection point in the Royals' future, both for 2025 and beyond.