Royals Beat the Buzzer

After a day of waiting, the Royals announced two trades that were made right at the very end.

Another trade deadline has come and past and with the removal of waiver trades that used to be allowed up to August 31, player movement is basically done for the season. The Royals were very quiet all day long even though there were a handful of rumors throughout the day about interest in the veterans the Royals had on their roster. We watched as trades rolled in throughout the day. Some, like the Juan Soto deal, were huge. Others, like the Phillies getting David Robertson from the Cubs, were potentially noteworthy but had less fanfare. And others still, like the move to trade Eric Hosmer to the Red Sox after he vetoed going to the Nationals, were semi-interesting in their vague ridiculousness.

But the Royals stood pat. And the fans got restless. And then a drink of water in a voyage through the desert emerged.

Mark Feinsand @Feinsand

The Royals have traded Whit Merrifield, per source.

That tweet came in at 5:00pm CDT on the dot. As we all know, trades have to be submitted to the league office by that time, but that doesn’t mean they have to be announced by the deadline. So as the news rolled in, we waited. And then the tweet that had me cracking up came in.

Jon Heyman @JonHeyman

Merrifield to Jays

I mean come on. There is, without a doubt, an irony there. I thought for a minute that maybe Heyman went to type Rays, but no, it was accurate. Whit Merrifield was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays for Max Castillo and Samad Taylor. I’ll get to them in a minute.

A few minutes later, the second trade came through.

Dennis Lin @dennistlin

The Padres traded Brent Rooker to the Royals for catcher Cam Gallagher, sources tell @Ken_Rosenthal and me.

I’ve only been predicting that Cam Gallagher would be traded for like four years now, which means that I’m finally right. Something about a broken clock applies here. When it was all said and done, trading Merrifield and Gallagher were all that were said or done.

The Returns

Max Castillo

The Royals saw Castillo when they were in Toronto before the break and they hit him a bit. He gave up three runs on five hits in three innings with on strikeout and no walks. On the whole in the big leagues this year, he’s gone 20.2 innings with 15 hits allowed, 20 strikeouts and five walks. It’s at least worth mentioning that he’s struck out 16 and walked four in 13.1 innings as a reliever.

He was signed in 2015 out of Venezuela and pitched mostly as a starter in the minors. His stuff isn’t exceptional, but he gets the job done. His fastball sits around 93-94 with some decent deception and arm-side movement. He also has a changeup he’s willing to use against righties that has some similar movement, but maybe doesn’t have quite enough velocity separation. He also has a low-80s slider that I’d be curious to see him throw a bit more to lefties.

While he’s seen a bit of a dip in control this season in the minors, he’s a pitcher who gets by with command and movement that gets the job done. Ultimately, I think he’s best served as a reliever, but he has the stuff and the endurance to provide more than a single inning, so the Royals could utilize him in a different type of role. That said, I don’t think the Royals should give up on him as a starter even if he’s ultimately ticketed for a bullpen role.

You can really see the run on his fastball here:

And it’s easy to see how the slider can be a plus pitch:

Castillo has been slotted in as the Royals number 13 prospect on MLB Pipeline, which is pretty solid for a guy with a .240/.290/.352 line.

Samad Taylor

Taylor was a 10th round pick of Cleveland in 2016 and just turned 24 in July, so he’s still a fairly young player. While he didn’t put it together before the lost 2020, he came back last season and hit .294/.385/.503 in AA with 16 homers, 17 doubles and a triple in 374 plate appearances. He hasn’t been quite as good this year in AAA but has still done a decent job of drawing walks and hitting for a bit of power.

His calling card is his speed, but he also has some impressive bat speed that has translated to power over the last couple of seasons. He’s a solid second baseman but has played pretty decently at third and in the outfield as well. Huh, a second baseman by trade who can handle outfield, can run and has some pop. That sure sounds familiar to me. I had the chance to see Taylor in Dunedin in 2019 when I was there for a work trip and while it’s just a small sample, I actually was very impressed with both the speed and the tools.

This whole article about him is very interesting about his approach to the game. I think some work with Drew Saylor & Co. can help to continue Taylor’s maturation as a hitter and I’d be pretty surprised if he doesn’t become at least a semi-useful big leaguer with room for a fair amount more.

Brent Rooker

You might be more familiar with this name than the other two even though the Royals did just face Castillo. Rooker had been with the Twins for the past two seasons before getting traded to the Padres with Taylor Rogers right at the start of the season. Rooker is a right-handed bat, which is pretty useful for the Royals who are leaning a bit lefty right now. He has power but will certainly strike out. In AAA this year for the Padres, he’s hit .272/.385/.605 with 38 extra base hits and 78 strikeouts in 273 plate appearances.

He isn’t a player without some big faults, though, which is probably why he was the return for a backup catcher who is good at his job but still a backup catcher. Rooker’s defense might make Hunter Dozier’s defense look good. He has the physical tools to be better, but he’s also slow, so he can’t make up for mistakes with speed. He’s also played with a reverse platoon split throughout his career, which is generally fine, but the issues the Royals might run into because of being lefty-heavy are better served with a lefty masher.

My guess is Rooker gets added to the big league roster as one of the open roster spots and will get a chance to prove himself at least until Edward Olivares returns from his quad injury. Even with his issues, it’s a nice return for Gallagher.

What They Didn’t Do

I think the Royals likely could have and should have done more. They didn’t have to trade anyone with every remaining player other than Zack Greinke under team control beyond the end of this season. I think we have a pretty decent idea of what the market for players the Royals had looked like. For example, Scott Barlow was likely a very hot item.

Scott Effross brought back Hayden Wesneski, who is a nearly big league ready starter. Matt Bush brought back Antoine Kelly, who has outstanding stuff. Anthony Bass and Zach Pop brought back Jordan Groshans from Toronto. Raisel Iglesias brought back Tucker Davidson. There are absolutely no guarantees that Barlow would have brought back a huge return, but for a pitcher who has been quietly one of the better relievers in baseball for the last couple of season who is under control for two more years beyond this one, I think he would have brought back a lot.

The Cardinals traded Harrison Bader for Jordan Montgomery from the Yankees. Both Bader and Michael A. Taylor are under contract through next year. Taylor is hitting better than Bader this year and played better defense last year. Plus he makes a bit less money. Would the Yankees have made this deal with the Royals? Given their need for 2023 starting pitching, I’d have made that trade even if it didn’t help the future. Would the Phillies have given up a prospect a few notches below Logan O’Hoppe for Taylor? Maybe not, but I think there could have been a deal there.

The Braves traded Will Smith for Jake Odorizzi. Would they have moved a prospect for Brad Keller instead? Maybe. The Pirates got a decent reliever in Johan Oviedo and a solid third base prospect for Jose Quintana and Chris Stratton. The Royals could have used that deal. There was an odd lack of mid-level starting pitchers moved this deadline, so I honestly don’t know what the market was, but it felt like a bit of a missed opportunity.

I think there also would have been markets for Taylor Clarke and Josh Staumont. We can only know the information available to us, though, which means we have no clue what was offered for any of these players. The offers either truly weren’t enough or the Royals were asking for more than was fair. The answer is usually somewhere in between. My guess is they probably passed up a fair deal and turned down a deal that wasn’t fair with maybe multiples of each. I wish they’d been a bit more active.

The Overall Haul

In the end, it looked like this throughout the deadline (with new MLB Pipeline prospect rankings in parentheses):

Adding six top-30 prospects is pretty solid. There was maybe a different direction they could have gone a couple of times, specifically in the deal with the Yankees. But I also see the David Peralta deal and like the return much better than what the Diamondbacks got back. In addition to those six top-30 prospects, they added a middle reliever in Wyatt Mills, a big league arm in Luke Weaver, depth in Anthony Misiewicz and what I assume is a big leaguer in Rooker. Ultimately, the end result of this trade deadline will come down to if Drew Waters can be a quality big leaguer and if they can get two or three big league pitchers out of this group.

I’d grade the whole deadline, including the Carlos Santana deal, a C. I think they did perfectly fine. The actual returns were probably more like a B- but I believe they could have easily done more. It’s a results business, though, so I very well could be underestimating what they’ve done and will end up loving everything about these last few weeks for the future of the franchise. That’s the fun of the deadline. Anything we believe today can turn out different as we see how things turn out.