Royals Trade Deadline Reaction: The Plan is Telegraphed

That was uneventful and even maddening. The Royals made three trades (though one was simply a DFA pickup, and a player I knew very little about was traded for him), but they held on to multiple pending free agents. I can’t remember the last time I was this disappointed by a Royals trade deadline. I had a pretty good idea that they were not going to trade anyone controllable other than maybe a reliever, but I didn’t expect them to hang on to John Schreiber. I can’t believe there wasn’t a team in baseball that wouldn’t have offered something for him.

So this is a big miss from me for the Royals. I will get to this shortly in more detail, but what they did (and didn’t do) yesterday has told the whole baseball world what they’re going to do this offseason. And if they don’t do it successfully, I believe that they both should and will be looking for new jobs. They absolutely can still run this gambit successfully, but they’ve chosen the path that leads to jobs being lost. In some ways, I suppose that’s admirable. In others, well, it’s probably foolish. The 2027 Royals have to win, and they have to win with pitching brought in from outside the organization. That is certainly no easy task, which I will get to shortly.

First, let’s break down the deals they made.

As weird as it is to say the Royals jumped the market two days before the deadline, they sort of did. It was very quiet leading up to the deadline, so when the Royals pulled Thomas off the field during the game on Saturday, you knew what was up. The big surprise was that they attached Falter to the deal. I was worried before the names came out that they had lessened the return given that Falter had some money owed to him, but I don’t think that’s the case. When we found out it was Braun as well as Holton, that seemed pretty fair to me. The Braves certainly didn’t overpay, but the Royals didn’t get fleeced either.