MLB Rumors: Kansas City Royals have green light to add payroll at trade deadline
By Hayden Kane
The tales of the Kansas City Royals’ demise were premature. Their story is still very much ongoing.
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With the team struggling for most of the early portion of the season, they will forgive us for starting to consider scenarios in which they might be sellers. Would it be time for them to trade James Shields, a free agent at season’s end? Would they even have to consider dishing Greg Holland as a concession to their payroll, even if it did mean breaking up their dominant bullpen?
One eight-game winning streak later and everything has changed. Now the Royals look like buyers at the trade deadline, a team that is only a piece or two away. This isn’t so much overreacting: no, when a team goes “all in” (if you’ll excuse the expression) the way that the Royals did when they traded top prospect Wil Myers away, that increases the urgency either direction. It creates a self-imposed window that is finite.
Now that the Royals are looking to possibly add pieces at the deadline, Andy McCullough of the Kansas City Star reports that the team and general manager Dayton Moore have the green light to add payroll if it will make a deal work:
"As the Royals push for their first playoff berth since 1985, Moore is confident the team’s ownership would allow him to expand the club’s record-setting payroll at next month’s trading deadline — if, of course, Moore deems it necessary. The team possesses a rich base of prospects that could be enticing to potential sellers."
Moore also pointed out that it would take the right deal for the Royals to go down that path, and in their case, it’s not clear what that trade would look like. They could use upgrades at third base and in the outfield, but would they find a trade to justify giving up prospects and adding payroll? If nothing else, the lesson learned by the Royals over the last couple seasons has been that they have to balance the long-term and the short term.
They might find that, even with a legit chance at a playoff spot, it is not worth making a trade for the sake of making one just because they are a contending team that is supposed to win right now.