10 Comments

Great article! I have been waiting for this discussion. I did not agree with signing Mike Minor to any deal. I like Minor and think he is a great bounce back candidate, but I think he impedes the ability to keep another arm on the 40 man roster this winter. Plus, I really wanted to see some trial by fire/I-29 shuttle between the young pitchers all season. And I agree whole heartedly that the best way to maximize this capital and "remove the ifs" (which I love that saying) is to trade for known commodities.

I started thinking about known commodities at a position of need for the Royals. I keep coming back to CF. I look through the list of known commodity CF and I keep coming back to one name - Mike Trout. Now, before you say I am crazy, think about this - the team trading for Trout would have to have the following items for him to waive his full no trade clause: #1 they would have to have the prospect capital to pull it off. I think we definitely check that box especially given the 15 names that need added before the Rule 5 draft this winter #2 they would have to have the payroll flexibility to add a $34,450,000/year to the payroll. According to spotrac.com the Royals only have 4 players under contract in 2022 totaling $28,200,000. Throw in the arbitration eligible players and Perez under an extension and we end up around $80,000,000 before Trout. So I believe the Royals have the payroll flexibility to add Trout. #3 they have to be on the verge of contention. This is agrueable

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Good work Lesky - Like Eli, I've been waiting for an article on this as well and glad you hammered it out in great detail. Like you, I don't see anyway we land Trout or even make a run at him.

Good point on the options not being mutually exclusive. However, I'm pretty sure most of this will be handled via trade. Let's face it, you can't keep all of the young guns down on the farm forever, the owl is already calling their name. And once they get to the Majors, our Minor League system will go from mid-tier to bottom 5 or worse. So how do we prevent that?

Ideally I'd like to see us trade some proven commodities rather than our young talent; Minor if he bounces back, Duffy for sure, Holly if he stays hot and we're not in it, Keller if the price is right.

Let's promote from within and backfill the kids that are coming to the show and put our faith in our drafting and development and keep the players around they we can control the longest and keep payroll within reason.

If we get through this personnel crunch having restocked the Minors and only given up one of who I see as the big 7 (Lynch, Singer, Lacy, Bowlan, Kowar, Pena and Witt Jr. (I don't see anyway BWJ gets traded unless we get Trout lol)) I would say that DM will have done a admirable job.

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I hope Michael Tucker makes the cut, he's red hot right now with his bat.

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I saw a few position players on the list of 15 that are not all tha exciting, and probably would not be considered players who could stick with a ML club all season.

I hated seeing Luciano go and would likewise hate to see Morel go.

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