Are the Royals going from buyer to seller?
The losses are mounting for Kansas City and may push them into seller territory soon.
When a team has a tough week against the Yankees and the Dodgers, you can give them a pass. Losing a series to Oakland, getting swept by a struggling Texas team, and then making the Marlins pitching look amazing is another thing altogether. These struggles have taken the Royals from likely playoff participant to the fringe of contention.
This chart goes through the loss to Miami on Tuesday, and it shows how much damage the last two weeks have done. The 27.1% (says 27.3% on the other page?) probability is made up of 4.4% to win the Central and 22.9% to snatch one of the wild card spots. They are salvaging the third Miami game while I am writing this, so the probabilities will probably be slightly higher than that by the time you read this. May 25th was the day that they peaked with a 31.8% shot at the central and a 70.8% chance to make the playoffs generally. That precipitous drop shows just how close they are to being out of the playoff race entirely. Another week or two and the window that opened after a hot start will be slammed forcefully down.
Having this unfortunate stretch right now makes the front office’s job much harder. J.J. Picollo has said they will be aggressive, but in which direction remains to be seen with the July 30th deadline still over a month away. Up to this point we would presume as a buyer, but that is becoming a less attractive way to spend resources by the day now. The standings are extremely compressed this year, meaning very few true sellers exist yet, and therefore not a lot of players are available to be acquired yet. It looks like New York or Baltimore will take the east and the other will take a wild card. Cleveland and Seattle are looking strong out front in their divisions. Then you have Minnesota, Boston, KC, Tampa, and Houston all in a wild card or within 3.5 games of it. It is going to be a tough three months with that much competition.
If the front office pulls off a trade in the near term, it will help with the situation, but may risk looking like the Angels of last year. A team that “went for it” and finished well out of the playoffs while weakening their long-term position. Imagine what they could have on their team right now if they had traded Shohei Ohtani. I think the Royals are better than that team was, but are they better than all any of the teams listed above? What would they need to add to be confident they can keep all those teams at bay? At least one outfield bat and a reliever or two seems like the answer. Even with those additions, the lack of depth for starters and position players is problematic.
I really, really want the Royals to be in this race all the way to the end. Those playoff runs of 2014 and 15 are so far behind us now, and it would be nice to really care about wins and losses after the All-Star break again, rather than just focusing on how the young players are doing in hopes of putting something together for the future. That desire could get the team in trouble. Chasing short-term success to move the playoff odds from the mid-20s to the 30s is just not worth spending any real prospects for. You might as well roll the dice with what you already have. To push this team back to a likely playoff berth is going to take another nice run soon, or a huge trade or two.
It is probably time to be patient right now, unless a real deal falls in their lap or they do a Brewers-style trade that mixes now and the future in a way that makes sense. This team clearly has holes and plugging them is going to be hard/expensive right now with no guarantee of a payoff. There is also no guarantee that they will be back in playoff contention the next few years either, so standing pat while the opportunity slips away is also a real risk. A week or two may give clarity, and it may also alienate a fan base that was getting excited for the first time in nearly a decade. To buy or to sell is a question that they need to get right.