The Royals should be aggressive buyers at the trade deadline

You play to win the game.

The Royals find themselves in the hunt for a playoff spot, but with a flawed team that Fangraphs estimates has a 44 percent chance of making the playoffs and just a 1.7 percent chance of winning a title. They could use another bat that can get on base, and a reliever or two. But trading for players to help them this season could damage a farm system that is already lowly-ranked.

Some would argue the Royals should stand pat, or even be sellers. I’m here to tell you they should be buyers.

Aggressive buyers.

The Royals have banked 57 wins already (more than all of last season!) The season has effectively been shortened to a 56-game sprint at this point, with several teams already eliminated. With a smaller sample size, chance plays a bigger role. One hot streak could effectively leapfrog a team into the playoffs.

Are the Royals flawed? You betcha. But look around the league - lots of contenders are flawed. The Guardians haven’t gotten good starting pitching. The Yankees have little lineup depth (they hit J.D. Davis cleanup the other night!) The Braves outfield can’t hit. The Dodgers have an entire starting rotation on the Injured List. You know how you address flaws? By acquiring players at the trade deadline!

And there is reason to think just a few good trades could make a big difference. A few weeks ago, Dan Szymborski at Fangraphs studied who could improve their chances the most by improving at the margins. He found the Royals could improve their playoff chances by 12 percentage points (third-most in baseball) simply by adding two wins of value.

Maybe you’re thinking “playoffs schmayoffs, if this team doesn’t win it all, what’s the point?” Okay, Ricky Bobby. But there is value in making the playoffs, as David Lesky recently put it:

In the end, 11 out of 12 playoff teams finish their season just by going home and not riding trucks, buses or whatever in a parade. And let me tell you, too, that 18 of 18 non-playoff teams have the same end to their season. But how many fans of teams like the Marlins or the White Sox or the Angels or the Giants or any team that doesn’t make it wouldn’t love to see two more games? Or six more games? Or whatever the number is? Of course they would!

Yes, the Royals have less than a 2 percent chance of winning it all. But that’s about the same odds the Diamondbacks faced at the trade deadline last year before they went to the World Series. And the same the Phillies faced at the same point before they won the pennant.

Imagine the 2014 Royals. Now it’s easy to say in hindsight they should have been buyers, but let’s imagine that everything plays out the same except in the Wild Card game, the comeback falls just short and they lose. And in 2015, they trade for Ben Zobrist and Johnny Cueto, but are unable to come back against the Astros in the ALDS. Two playoff appearances, two losses. The team fails to make the playoffs after that and the gang breaks up after 2017.

Now imagine the same team, only they’re sellers in 2014. They trade away Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Alex Gordon, Lorenzo Cain, HDH, James Shields, even Salvy. The prospects they get in return combine with Sean Manaea - who is never traded in 2015 - and the rest of the 2018-2023 Royals. Which of these two scenarios would you prefer?

If you’re choosing the latter, I suspect you either are either overestimating the success rate of prospects, or you’re super high on Adalberto Mondesi. Prospects fail. A lot. It’s nice to think that trading a lot of good players in their prime (if you can find buyers for all these players, and suitable returns as well, not an easy thing to do) would net several future All-Stars, but that is pretty far-fetched.

If you don’t believe me, you can look at how great the returns were for some of the most successful returns in recent history - the 2012-14 Cubs and Astros, and the 2018-2022 Orioles. I list the only notable prospects that turned into decent players.

2012-14 Astros traded away: Dexter Fowler, Jed Lowrie, Bud Norris, Jose Veras, Mark Melancon, Carlos Lee, Brett Myers, Wandy Rodriguez

Received: Luis Valbuena, Dan Straily, Chris Carter, Max Stassi, Josh Hader, Jed Lowrie, Robbie Grossman, Chris Devenski

Josh Hader didn’t become “All Star Josh Hader” until the Astros traded him to Milwaukee. Chris Carter won a home run title but quickly flamed out and Luis Valbuena was an okay starter on their playoff teams.

2012-14 Cubs traded away: Sean Marshall, Marlon Byrd, Andrew Cashner, Reed Johnson, Paul Maholm, Geovany Soto, Ryan Dempster, Scott Feldman, Carlos Marmol, Matt Garza, Alfonso Soriano, Jason Hammel, James Russell

Received: Travis Wood, Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Hendricks, Jake Arrieta, Addison Russell, Victor Caratini

Hendricks and Arrieta were terrific finds, Russell had a very brief peak as an All-Star. Anthony Rizzo-for-Andrew Cashner was really more of a traditional young player-for-young player swap than a rebuild trade.

2018-22 Orioles traded away: Manny Machado, Zach Britton, Kevin Gausman, Jonathan Schoop, Dylan Bundy, Richard Bleier, Mychal Givens, Alex Cobb, Jorge Lopez, and Trey Mancini

Netted them: Kyle Bradish, Dean Kremer, Yennier Cano, Dillon Tate

Two mid-rotation starting pitchers, and two effective relievers. Nice hauls, but certainly not the reason they are competitive today.

The point is, those teams didn’t rebuild to become contenders through trading away all their good players. The became contenders by acquiring good players through all means, including drafting and development - which you can do as a good team or a bad team.

So selling at this point in the standings would be foolish, what about just standing pat? The lowly-ranked farm system may not be able to withstand depleting talent to make the trades necessary to improve the team.

But the poor state of the farm system should be even more reason to be aggressive at the trade deadline now. There likely isn’t more help on the way. If you don’t like the playoff odds now, what are the playoff odds going to be in the future without Seth Lugo having a Cy Young-type season? Without Bobby Witt Jr. playing at an MVP-level (what, you think he can do this every season?) When Salvy starts to decline? Do you think a bunch of unknown prospects can improve those odds? What are the odds any of them puts up a season as good as Lugo is right now?

I say this as someone that admittedly is not high on this farm system. At all. No one should really be off-limits. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think the Royals will regret trading Ben Kudrna in a deal for a good hitter. Or Frank Mozzicato for a reliever that can stabilize the pen. I actually like Carter Jensen a lot, but what are the odds he ever turns into a quality player? 10 percent? No knock on him, it’s just really, really hard to make it in MLB. The Royals have a bunch of players now that are making it, and succeeding.

On the flip side, what would this team look like with a decent on-base guy at the top of the lineup hitting in front of Bobby, Salvy, and Vinnie? What if they had one or two more solid relievers in the late innings? How would a team with Seth Lugo, Cole Ragans, and Brady Singer fare in a short series?

Somewhere along the lines, some fans have bought into the notion that only rings matter. But playoff baseball is fun. Heck, just being in a pennant race is fun, even if you don’t make the post-season. If you gave me the above scenarios, I’d take two playoff losses every time over a bunch of speculative prospects playing with Mondesi, Jakob Junis, and Ryan O’Hearn. It’s late July and the Royals have a chance to win. These opportunities don’t come around all the time - let’s hope they make the right decision.