This is not where the Royals expected to be. Here is how they can get a little closer
If you have not already, now is as good a time as any to mourn the hopes you had for the 2021 Royals.
They began the season as something of a sleeper pick, then developed a sort of holy-cow-they-really-might-do-this in beginning May with the game’s best record and then … well, they are now much closer to Buddy Bell’s “I’ll never say it can’t get worse” than Ned Yost’s “I don’t know why it works, I just know that it works.”
The 2021 Royals used to be about maybe chasing the playoffs.
The 2021 Royals are now about putting the 2022 Royals in position to chase the playoffs.
Fortunately, there are tangible steps the club can take. Unfortunately, those steps come without guarantees.
The Royals are at a crossroads. They are at a transition. The club built itself from punchline to parade with an obsessive focus on the farm system and an unrelenting loyalty and belief in the players on hand.
Going forward, the Royals have vowed to be more transactional, to seek opportunities to use the talent on hand to acquire more talent raised by other organizations.
The shift has been signaled by John Sherman in a few ways, beginning with his introductory press conference two Novembers ago. Dayton Moore, the general manager who has operated with relative autonomy since his hiring in 2006, is on board. But change is never easy.
The next two weeks will tell part of the story.
Danny Duffy, Scott Barlow, Carlos Santana and Whit Merrifield are among the Royals with trade value for contenders. Will the Royals listen? Engage? Act?
Trade returns are rarely what fans desire — especially for short-term rentals — but any injection of talent would be helpful to a farm system that’s progressed nicely in the last year.
This is not simple. Trades do not occur in vacuums, and the action leading up to the July 30 trade deadline will be particularly complicated. Fifteen teams — including everyone but the White Sox in the AL Central — came out of the All-Star break with less than a 10 percent chance of reaching the playoffs, according to FanGraphs.
That could mean a flooded buyers’ market, and besides, the Royals’ top potential trade pieces come with their own complications. Duffy has so-called 10-5 rights, meaning he can veto any trade. Merrifield remains valuable (and underpaid) for the Royals, and teams have not shown major trade interest in the past.
Barlow has three years of club control remaining, and his departure would further stress an already overstressed pitching staff. Santana is one of the Royals’ few reliable hitters, and the prospect the Royals hope can be Santana’s heir at first base — Nick Pratto, who has raked at Class AA Northwest Arkansas — is not quite ready for the big leagues.
All of those are details that can be worked out in the right situation, of course. We present them as a reminder that these things are never black and white.
But even if no trades materialize, the Royals can still use these last 2 1/2 months to position themselves for 2022. Some of this will be obvious. Some of this will be subtle.
Let’s start with the obvious. The Royals will want to dance another round with Jackson Kowar and Daniel Lynch. Their struggles were fierce and undeniable, and should spark an honest inventory of the club’s process of graduating prospects to the big leagues.
Maybe it’s as simple as nerves, or subtle mechanic adjustments. Maybe it’s more complicated. At worst, systemic. Whatever — the Royals must ask themselves some hard questions and find the helpful answers.
Edward Olivares should get a run of consistent plate appearances so the team can better determine if the 25-year-old is a starting outfielder, a fourth outfielder, or a so-called 4-A guy. Emmanuel Rivera should be treated similarly assuming his fractured hamate heals.
These are examples of tangible steps the Royals can take. Others aren’t so direct, and are more important.
Tops on the list: Hunter Dozier and Brad Keller need to feel success again.
There are no absolutes in baseball, but the Royals’ near-term success becomes extremely difficult without each of them — Dozier is under control through 2025; Keller through 2023 — getting back closer to their past success.
As hard as 2021 has been on them, the Royals don’t have to look far for hope. Mike Moustakas was demoted a few months before a postseason home run binge. Alex Gordon was a bust just before he became a star. Wade Davis was a broken starter before becoming the world’s best reliever.
Lorenzo Cain, Kendrys Morales, Eric Hosmer — the success of 2014 and 2015 was built largely on guys with recent struggles.
This is not to say Dozier and Keller will become Gordon and Davis. This is to say that baseball players do not develop in straight lines, and few markets have better examples of careers blossoming after being written off by many than Kansas City.
The last part is subtle. The most striking part of the Royals’ bad first half is not Adalberto Mondesi’s injuries or the struggles of any particular player.
The most striking part is that a group of men with extensive experience in the center of winning — 11 players plus manager Mike Matheny have competed in a World Series — have allowed more than one third of their season so far to be losing streaks of five, six, nine and 11 games.
The root cause of that must be determined, as much as that’s possible. The answer does not have to be damning — the 2012 Royals were an objective failure, the 2013 Royals lost 19 of 23 in May, and in 2014 many in Kansas City and around baseball thought the Royals should have sold pieces after losing 10 of 13 nearing the trade deadline.
In other words, adversity is not the mark of a failed baseball push as much as it’s the mark of literally any baseball push.
Pushing through that adversity is the important stuff. The second half of the Royals season should be all about figuring out who will help push them through, and how to best position them to do that in 2022.
This story was originally published July 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "This is not where the Royals expected to be. Here is how they can get a little closer."